Shoeless Joe

Shoeless Joe (1982) by W.P. Kinsellais a magic realist novel that brings together stories about the Black Sox Scandal of the 1919 World Series by intermingling fantastic elements with the factual. The novel tells the story of Ray Kinsella, who lives with his wife Annie and five-year-old daughter, Karin, on a farm in Iowa, where he grows corn. The writer weaves the narrative around the importance of baseball in the collective memory of Americans, and the social fabric of America. The novel makes creative use of autobiography, fiction and historical facts. Shoeless Joe includes several characters, including the narrator, whose last name is the same as that of the author, real people such as the writer J.D Salinger and eight, actual Chicago White Sox baseball players who were banned from playing baseball for their role in the Black Sox Scandal. The novel was made into the popular 1989 movie Field of Dreams.

Shoeless Joe begins with the narrator, Ray Kinsella, describing how one day, while sitting on the verandah of his home, he heard the voice of a ballpark announcer telling him, "If you build it, he will come" (1).