Reviews

Tartabull's Throw by Henry Garfield continues the story of Cyrus Nygerski, begun in Moondog and Room 13, and combines the Red Sox 1967 race for the pennant, time travel and a crush on a mysterious werewolf named Cassandra. (The author, by the way, is the great-great-grandson of the 20th U.S. president, James A. Garfield.) ( May) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Gr 9 Up-This story begins in the late summer of 1967, as Cyrus Nygerski, a .175 hitter, is released from his minor league baseball team in Beloit, WI. However, the novel's focus soon shifts, as Cyrus meets Cassandra, a girl fresh from the Summer of Love in San Francisco, whom he is convinced he has met before, and who may be a werewolf. After this meeting, readers are propelled on a wild ride from Maine to New York to Chicago and California. Along the way, they encounter a time portal that allows for parallel lives lived in alternate time lines, and shifts in narrative voice and point of view, with a few fairly graphic sex scenes and some gruesome encounters with violent humans and werewolves thrown in. It becomes a little confusing until the extremely dense and detailed explanation comes at the end. However, the parallel stories are put together with the intricacy of an elaborate jigsaw puzzle, and the author evokes the feel of the country in the late `60s, the uniting spirit of a tight pennant race, the coast of Maine, and the scruffy life in the lower minor leagues. And fans of the two other books about Cyrus Nygerski (Room 13 [1997; o.p.] and Moondog [1995; o.p., both St. Martin's]) will enjoy this prequel. It's an unusual and challenging mix for fantasy/sci-fi and sports fans.-Todd Morning, Schaumburg Township Public Library, IL Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.