Reading (and writing) historical fiction is generally my jam. But there are lots of other novels that nudge me outside of my comfort zone, and recently, a debut YA novel, SOUR APPLES, by Marylander Paul Jantzen fit the bill.
Why read outside my comfort zone? There are many reasons to try out many things outside my comfort zone, but when reading is my passion, it’s trickier to push myself than, say, taking a bite of a Granny Smith apple (which I find sour, except when baking them with my mother’s famous apple crumb pie recipe).
Maybe you’re a teenage girl hoping to understand why boys behave so peevishly, maybe you’re nostalgic for the sandlot baseball you played with your buddies in the 1970s, or maybe you always wanted a treehouse but were thwarted by safety-conscious parents.
In Jimmy Hamilton’s 11th summer, he’s about to prove himself on the pitchers mound in his small town, make an unlikely friend who coaches him like a pro, and kiss a girl he’d considered icky until he fell for her sports prowess and “chocolate eyes.” But first—there’s the matter of replacing the treehouse his mom deemed unsafe, and the dutiful reading of library books she deems important. As Jimmy ponders lots of life’s coming-of-age questions, none is more ironic than the one he wonders about books: “If reading is so great, then why are all the books at the library free?”
For debut author Paul Jantzen, “A Christmas Story” was the spark that inspired him to write. SOUR APPLES is a baseball story—a sweet, humorous YA novel of summertime misadventures with unintended consequences, starring a boy with Ralphie Parker’s eternal appeal.
You can find SOUR APPLES here, or wherever ebooks are sold.
As for those Granny Smith apples, you’ll find five or six of them in my mother’s famous Apple Crumb Pie recipe.
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