Book Review: Kelli's Pine

Kelli's Pine. Jay Grochowski, Independently Published, March 31, 2020, Trade Paperback, E-book, and Audiobook, 315 pages.

Reviewed by Paige Doepke.

Kelli's Pine is a story of life, love, and natural growth that happens over time. The novel follows Eddie Blackburn, lover of baseball, throughout different stages of his life: from his first big love, quickly into parenthood and adulthood, and all of the little steps in between. 

The story skips forward and backward to meaningful moments that help explain why his character experiences life in the way he does. It is a lovely way to get to know a character, almost in the same way you would get to know a new friend, with little snippets here and there of their life thus far. 

This somewhat guarded manner in which we get to know Eddie is just another interesting layer of characterization Grochowski builds.

While Kelli’s Pine is often a story involving baseball, it’s not actually a story about baseball. Baseball is just the thread that connects the various chapters of Eddie's life from start to finish. His love of the sport, and his family's extreme athleticism, is what he can always rely on. Despite the challenges of starting a family sooner than expected, the letdown of adjusting both his dreams and those of his wife, and an up-and-down business that he doesn't love, baseball is always there. 

For his son, Cole Blackburn, who inherited his mother's abilities as an athlete and her social anxiety, Eddie creates an unorthodox baseball education. He will do whatever it takes to ensure that Cole can break out of the stagnant lifestyle in which their family is stuck. Eddie grooms Cole, almost entirely on his own, into a baseball superstar, helping Cole become the athlete he never became himself.

What struck and delighted me the most about this novel is that it is a true depiction of real life. Eddie’s life did not always progress in the ways he expected, as none of our lives ever do. He made mistakes and took wrong turns, which created roadblocks to his projected future. But as a reader, we can see that as life is happening to him, while it feels to him like it’s being muddled up, it’s really coming together in a beautiful way. Eddie has a family that loves him, a son with a bright future, and the strength of a well-lived past.

This novel makes you think about your own life and how every turn has led you to this place in which you were always meant to land. I highly recommend Kelli’s Pine to the interested reader, baseball enthusiast or not.