Synopses & Reviews
A fan's notes for the ages, Faithful grew from an email exchange last summer. Filled with the heady mix of exhilaration and frustration familiar to all Boston Red Sox fans, Stewart O'Nan fired off a note to fellow Sox fan, Stephen King, who responded with his thoughts on Pedro, Nomar, Manny, Mueller, and Theo. From the supposed Curse of the Bambino to f###in' Bucky Dent to the recent off-season battle for Alex Rodriguez, Sox fans have seen it all since 1918...except for that elusive World Championship. Baseball history has transformed these fans into a "nation" not to mention the most dedicated, knowledgeable fanbase on the planet. Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King, proud members of Red Sox Nation, will chronicle the 2004 baseball season from spring training to the last game of the season the important plays, the controversial managerial decisions, the significant front office moves, and the spectacular finish. Attending games together, keeping a running diary of observations and arguments, and occasionally evoking great or tragic events in Red Sox history. King and O'Nan will cheer on their beloved team with the eternal hope that this just might be the year. If you don't have season ticket box seats right behind the firstbase dugout, you can't beat Faithful.
Review
"[A]n excitable, book-length high-five for the winning team....[T]he authors rise to the occasion. They present appealingly hotheaded accounts of each game, complete with unedited trivia and you-are-there minutiae." Janet Maslin, The New York Times
Review
"King and O'Nan are the kind of fans who make for great baseball companions: knowledgeable, opinionated, funny and irreverent." Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today
Review
"[A]n entertaining chronicle of the just-completed 2004 Boston Red Sox baseball season. In fact, this collaborative memoir of diary entries and e-mails is nothing less than a passionate love letter to...the new champions of Major League Baseball." Boston Globe
Review
"As a collectible souvenir, a completist's highlight reel, joyous fans could hardly ask for more. As a book, however, not as a keepsake but rather as four hundred pages of self-standing reading material, it's not exactly a page-turner....And yet here's the rub: the authors stumbled on a rare season, and somewhere down the line just about anyone who followed this year's Red Sox will be thankful that two passionate fans kept notes." Dave Weich, Powells.com (read the entire Powells.com review)
Synopsis
Two fiercely avid Red Sox fans document one of the most eagerly anticipated baseball seasons of all time.
About the Author
Stewart O'Nan's novels include
Snow Angels,
The Speed Queen,
A Prayer for the Dying, and
The Night Country.
Granta has named him one of the Twenty Best Young American Novelists.
Stephen King is the author of more than forty novels and two hundred short stories. In 2003 he received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
Both authors live in Red Sox Nation.