It is the time of war in Vietnam, of civil rights trailblazing, of social upheaval, and Kurt and Ellis Frye, an immigrant father and his first-generation American son from the small farming town of Homer, Colorado, are forced to navigate the changing American West in absence of one another. After discovering an aptitude for pitching--especially the volatile knuckleball--Ellis takes it upon himself to become a professional ballplayer, leaving the wheat farm he was to inherit from his father and starting off across the country on a journey that will force him to encounter what it means to be an authentic person. Meanwhile, Kurt, his health failing, struggles to tend the farm on his own, forced to realize the gravity of loneliness in both the departure of his son and the death of his wife. The unpredictable flow of life brings the two back together, and, burdened with the choice of whether or not to reclaim the home they built together, discover one another's autonomy, the life they knew not. A Lonely Place Where the Heart Beats Loud is a story about baseball, of farming, of life in a changing America, but more importantly it examines what it means to experience homecoming and what we inherit from those we care for.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:pdx.edu/oai:pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu:open_access_etds-5516 |
| Date | 30 May 2018 |
| Creators | Kessler, Benjamin Richard |
| Publisher | PDXScholar |
| Source Sets | Portland State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Dissertations and Theses |
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