Cuban Prospect

By: Brian Shawver

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Synopsis: A novel of last-ditch hopes, destiny’s curve balls, and quiet redemption, The Cuban Prospect gloriously projects a harrowing, yet affirming vision. With compassionate intensity and great heart, Brian Shawver, in his powerful debut novel, tells the story of Dennis Birch, a 34-year old failed major league ball player turned minor league scout whose field of dreams has always been baseball. No longer a candidate for baseball greatness himself—if he ever was—Dennis accepts the challenge of smuggling a hot right-handed pitcher out of Cuba in the hope that promoting the greatness of another will somehow confer a small, manageable portion of it on himself. Birch’s innocent belief in the rightness of his mission blinds him to some of the realities of it, and what seems at first to be a straight road to glory and his name on a plaque in Cooperstown, leads him into dangerous, sordid, and morally complex waters. As becomes excruciatingly clear, Fidel Castro's Cuba is much further from the Florida Keys than the miles marked on a map.