Books by William Hazelgrove

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  The Pitcher 2

  Ricky Hernandez is now a senior and all seems to be going well until a new pitcher moves into town from Texas who can pitch almost a hundred miles an hour. MLB Scouts have been snooping around but now Ricky’s future is in jeopardy with the fireball pitcher Bailey Hutchinson on the team. When he beats Ricky out of his starting spot and his violent father Fernando returns it seems his dream to become a Major League Pitcher is gone. Ricky returns to the field with The Pitcher to relearn the art of pitching one more time.

  
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  Jackpine

  When the sixteen year old daughter of a prominent attorney is raped in a woodshed and a logger found shot the next morning, Deputy Sheriff Reuger London becomes embroiled in a war between environmentalists, the Ojibwa Indians fighting for their timber rights, and the ruthless son of a powerful logger. Ben Johnson is the biggest logger in the Northwoods and his son Cliff will soon take over the business. Logging is dying a slow death from environmental restrictions, and all that’s left are the scrub firs and jackpine. But far up in the Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota are trees called the Old Pines. These three hundred year Norwegian pines are priceless and Johnson Timber wants them.

  A radical leader of Earth First, Tom Jorde, will do anything to stop the logging in the Boundary Waters. Then another logger is murdered and Jorde is implicated. The town pressures Reuger to stop the environmentalist and arrest an Indian, Tommy Toboken, for the rape of the girl. Tommy had saved his life once before and Reuger knows he is being setup. When he falls in love with the lawyer brought to town to defend Tom Jorde and realizes Johnson Timber is going to log out the Federally protected trees, Reuger is torn between old loyalties and what is right.

  
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  Real Santa

  George Kronenfeldt is an unemployed engineer with one shot to keep his daughters belief in Santa intact. When Megan tells him the only way she will believe in Santa is if she can videotape him and then tells her fourth grade class she will prove the existence of Santa Claus by posting her video to YouTube, George realizes he must become the Real Santa. He devises a plan to land nine reindeer on his roof and go down his chimney, hiring a broken down movie director who eventually has him funding a full scale production that bankrupts him and threatens his marriage. When George goes to find the “Real Santa” to help him, the line between what is real and magic is crossed. Real Santa is a funny heartwarming story of parenthood gone wrong and illuminates what lengths parents will go to keep their children happy.

  
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  My Best Year

  Paul and Julie Clampet want their autistic son Toby to have a great senior year in high school. They want him to catch a winning touchdown, ride in the homecoming parade, and go to the homecoming dance. After being expelled from his high school they find a broken down school in Indiana where they hire the teachers and kids who conspire to give their son his best year ever. Funny, poignant, and a comment on the times we live in, My Best Year is up there with Perotta’s Election for diagramming the heartbreak and triumph that is high school.

   

  
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  The Pitcher

  “I never knew I had an arm until this guy called out, “Hey you want to try and get a ball in the hole, sonny?” I was only nine, but mom said, “come on, let’s play.” This Carney guy with no teeth and a fuming cigarette hands me five blue rubber balls and says if I throw three in the hole we win a prize. He’s grinning, because he took mom’s five bucks and figures a sucker is born every minute. That really got me, because we didn’t have any money after Fernando took off, and he only comes back to beat up mom and steal our money. So I really wanted to get mom back something, you know, for her five bucks.”

  A boy with a golden arm but no money for lessons. A mother who wants to give her son his dream before she dies. A broken down World Series pitcher who cannot go on after the death of his wife. These are the elements of The Pitcher. A story of a man at the end of his dream and a boy whose dream is to make his high school baseball team. In the tradition of The Natural and The Field of Dreams, this is a mythic story about how a man and a boy meet in the crossroads of their life and find a way to go on. You will laugh and you will cry as The Pitcher and Ricky prepare for the ultimate try out of life.

  
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  Rocket Man

  The Catcher in the Rye for the Great Recession generation, Rocket Man is a satire of life today, a time when middle class America is holding on by its fingernails to the increasingly elusive American Dream.

  Rocket Man is a very funny and poignant comment on our times, when an upside down middle class is barely hanging onto the American dream. Dale Hammer is a man who is determined to find meaning in a landscape of suburban homogeneity, looking for the moment he had with his own father when they blasted off a rocket on a wintery evening. He feels his son slipping away as he tries to get around “the silent shame of fathers and sons.” He becomes the Rocket Man for his sons scout troop. When Rocket Day comes, Dale is determined to give his son more than his father gave him.

  
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