Ray Kinsella, sitting on the porch of his Iowa farm one evening,
hears the voice of a ghostly baseball announcer. It speaks to
him the famous line, "If you build It, he will come." Needing no
further explanation, Kinsella visualizes the ball field he is
being asked to create in the middle of his field of corn. The
voice will speak only two more things to Ray: "Ease his pain"
and "Go the distance," and yet the dreaming, idealistic man
knows just what it is he has to do. Digging up his corn to build
a ballpark will inspire the return of baseball legend Shoeless
Joe Jackson, a man whose reputation was forever tarnished by the
scandalous 1919 World Series. Thus begins Shoeless Joe, the
award-winning novel by W.P. Kinsella which also inspired Kevin
Costner's popular film, Field of Dreams. W.P. Kinsella has been
called a great writer of baseball novels, but this is
misleading. While his works all evince a love for the game he
grew up watching, Kinsella doesn't merely treat baseball as a
subject in itself. Rather, h