Bookshelf Review: The Northern

The Northern: A Novel, by Jacob McArthur Mooney

As readers of this blog will recall, I usually don’t delve into baseball fiction. Fiction in general has lost its allure to me over the years. But once in a while I will indulge. And since I’ve been on a baseball card kick for the past month or so, this seemed like an appropriate time to look at The Northern.

Set in the early 1950s, Mooney’s book follows the exploit of 12-year-old Christopher, his little brother, Mikey, and “Coach” Miller, a friend of the family, who embark on a journey to sign minor league players to baseball card contracts for a small company seeking to compete with the fledgling but already monopolistic Topps.

There always seems to be something a little bit shady about their enterprise as they travel from team to team in the Northern League which operates franchises along the U.S and Canada border. Coach is looking to get aspiring professionals to sign with his company for non-exclusive deals, paying them a whopping $5 for their agreements.

Both Christopher and Mikey are wise beyond their years as they accompany Coach on a summer’s journey. There is a relationship between Coach and their widowed mother which the reader never quite seems to get an understanding. Are they romantically involved? Indeed, is Coach the Mikey’s real dad? The answer is never convincingly offered.

The trio is on a deadline, trying to get as many contracts as possible before the end of the Northern League’s season. Of course, they are met with obstacles, financial downfalls, difficulties with border officials, and, most importantly, the players’ hesitation to sign with their card company, ostensibly operated by Mormons, lest they be shut out of a better deal with Topps.

The novel goes back and forth between the situations with the teams and the relationship between the boys and Coach and gets somewhat repetitive in the telling. Christopher, being a normal adolescent with an abnormal talent for business and diplomacy, teeters on the edge of puberty and childhood and carries the bulk of the tale, for better or worse.

There are underlying issues, primarily with the adult in the group. What’s Coach’s deal? Is he trustworthy? The fact that he is hiding something is obvious from the start but we don’t know if it’s good or bad.

Mooney, in his first novel, weaves multiple threads, convincingly describing the life of players in the low minor leagues in what could be described as the color gray: there is little sunshine and even a little darkness. Readers will have to decide which climate suits them best.