HOME AND AWAY - Rochelle Alers
Kensington/Dafina
BUY
Reviewer: Brenda Larnell | Rating: A
HISTORIC FICTION

REVIEW: The inimitable writer, Rochelle Alers, presents a great piece of historical fiction that spans more than 80 years. The thing that is so special about this story is that it reflects the author’s lifelong love of professional baseball. Who knew? In this story we meet Harper Fleming, the daughter of a retired professional baseball player. Harper is going through a personal crisis when we meet her. She is tired of her dead-end newspaper job that continually passes her over for a promotion. So, she makes a decision. She quits and heads to Nashville, Tennessee to stay with her grandfather, Bernard Fleming, to regroup.
Harper has so many wonderful memories of spending summers with her grandparents, and learning about her family history, especially her great- grandfather, Kelton Fleming, a baseball superstar who played in the Negro Baseball Leagues. Ms. Alers gives the reader a look into the history of the early Negro League players by employing the technique of an embedded narrative or a story in a story. While visiting her grandfather, he presents her with some detailed documents written by Kelton Fleming himself that recorded his history from 1930-1940 as a player for the Memphis Eagles. Harper decides to author a book that chronicles her great grandfather’s life and titles it Home and Away. She changes the names, so we are introduced to Moses Gilliam aka Kelton Fleming. I’ll allow you to discover why Harper felt it necessary to change names and places when you read the story. Kelton’s story gives us an engrossing look at a young Negro baseball player during the era of Jim Crow in the United States, and the contrast playing baseball in Mexico, the Caribbean, and South America.
Harper not only has a renewed sense of achievement as she delves into her family history, but she also has a renewed sense of personal satisfaction when she meets a young man from her childhood visits to Tennessee who has also relocated to Nashville. Cheney Sanders is just who the doctor ordered for Harper to thoroughly enjoy her stay in Nashville. They were childhood acquaintances, but this time they are two consenting adults who have rediscovered each other.
There is a lot of fascinating history of the Negro Baseball Leagues in this book, and how one player made a name for himself playing in the league. The story in the story is fascinating. I enjoyed HOME AND AWAY, and I know you will too. I recommend it for your reading pleasure.
14th January 2025 | romcol@gmail.com
(A)