Gil

by Darin Gibby

Overview

Some gifts come with a price.

Twenty years before, high school coach Gil Gilbert gave up his dream to play professional baseball so he could marry his pregnant girlfriend, Keri. When he miraculously discovers that he can pitch with deadly accuracy and speed, he must choose between his successful career and comfortable family life or his chance to play with the Colorado Rockies during a player’s strike. Gil stuns the pitching staff with 100 mph fastballs and is offered a contract.

After joining the Rockies, the world soon learns that Gil is a supernatural phenomenon and the Rockies keep winning. But Gil soon faces stiff opposition, including a frivolous lawsuit, a father who feels his son’s calling to pitch is to save souls, and threats from the striking players. As the season progresses, Gil discovers that his unexpected gift is the result of a rare disease, and continuing to pitch may hasten his own death. While Keri supports his decision to keep playing, she is fearful about her husband’s bizarre health condition.

Gil must decide what price he is willing to pay to live his dream.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781633933637
Publisher:	Koehler Books
Publication date:	10/01/2016
Pages:	276
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Darin Gibby is the author of The Vintage Club and Why Has America Stopped Inventing? He is also an internationally renowned patent attorney and has been featured in a wide variety of publications as well as TV and radio shows, including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Leonard Lopate show, Yahoo! Finance, and To The Best of Our Knowledge.

Editorial Reviews

"Baseball novels are a staple of literature. Something about the game captures our imagination, maybe because we view the players as better versions of ourselves, chasing a dream we once harbored. Like the game itself, we lose ourselves in the rhythms and bounces of it. Every pitch is an opportunity, every swing a herculean effort, every throw from the outfield the pursuit of a low probability shot at changing everything.
In Darin Gibby's new novel Gil, this sense of the dream is given breath through vivid detail and the vicarious immediacy of strapping on the cleats and staring down a batter. Love, dreams, bitter disappointment, heroic effort-it's all here and it will break your heart as it takes you back to a time when you believed anything is possible. You don't have to love baseball to love Gil, but if you do, you'll be back on the field. Being in the game is everything, and Gil takes us there with a full count and a shot at glory."

-Larry Brooks, former minor league player

"At 44 years of age, Gil Gilbert places his seemingly superhuman ability to pitch a baseball at unheard of speed on display with the Colorado Rockies. The decision has its fans and detractors, even within his family. With the ultimate prize within reach, Gil must decide if it's worth the sacrifices he must make. Gil is a well-told tale about the personal costs of pursuing a dream and the far-reaching, unintended consequences it can bring. A mesmerizing tale about much more than baseball, Gil will have you cheering while turning pages. Baseball fan or not, you'll love Gil."

-Ron McManus, award-winning author of Libido's Twist and The Drone Enigma

"Gil captures the imagination, and presents questions that linger long after the reading is done. Very well written with realistically drawn characters, it is a compelling portrait of a man torn between the two North Stars in his life: baseball and family. Even though this is a baseball tale, readers who are not baseball fans, like me, will find Gil relatable and enjoyable, because Gil speaks to universal themes that haunt us all-the choices that we make in life, and the "truths" that we thought were inviolate, but turn out to be just a set of individual points of view."

-Maria Granovsky, Ph.D., J.D., author of Poison Pill

From the Publisher