Barnstorming: A Negro Baseball Story

“It was a typical muggy evening in Central Florida in the summer of 1929. The air was hot. The skies were clear - full of moonlight. But the night wasn’t quiet. Field hands were excited: the fruits of their labor were about to pay off. The strawberry crop was ready to be picked.” And then the unspeakable happened.

Jonathan Carroll’s new book takes a look at America during a time of lynching and other atrocities acted on people of color. But the author offers the reader hope, humor – and a little romance.

Columbus Jones loves baseball and yearns to start his own team. He and his friend Isaac organize the Eatonville Catfish as part of the Negro League, the only league that accepted black players. They build a solid team, but desperately need a good pitcher. Isaac offers a try-out to a promising young pitcher. One problem: the young man is white. Will the talented pitcher defy the Jim Crow laws of the South? Will the team accept him?

Columbus’s daughter Leola defies the culture of racial hatred when she falls for a young reporter. She has a second “fight” on her hands: the bias against women when she enters a “man’s world”.

This book is about race – blacks and whites in the South during a time of cultural change, but it is also about love, honor, perseverance, and understanding during a violent era in U.S. history. There were many who stood up to the “wrongs” and worked hard to make them “right”. Barnstorming explores the complexities of racism and the triumph of so many Americans.

Fall in love with the many players in “Barnstorming”. From pitchers to the outfield, from loving mothers to defiant children, this book will sweep the reader along through four decades of change. You’ll be rooting for them all.