J. Henry Waugh immerses himself in his fantasy baseball league every night after work. As owner of every team in the league, Henry is flush with pride in a young rookie who is pitching a perfect game. When the pitcher completes the miracle game, Henry's life lights up. But then the rookie is killed by a freak accident, and this"death" affects Henry's life in ways unimaginable. In a blackly comic novel that takes the reader between the real world and fantasy, Robert Coover delves into the notions of chance and power.

Praise for The work of Robert Coover:

"Robert Coover is one of the most original and exciting writers around. Every new book from him is great news." --Edwidge Danticat, McSweeney's

"Coover adds his dazzling two bits to the deconstructionist turf Paul Auster prowled in The New York Trilogy." --Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"[A] brilliant parody of noir and hardboiled fiction and film." --Michael Lipkin, New York Journal of Books

"Right from the start the book nearly matches On the Road for sheer electricity . . . Coover made baseball on the page seem three-dimensional, exulting in what he called the game's 'almost perfect balance between offense and defense.' He captured what Philip Roth, in a 1973 New York Times essay on baseball, called 'its longueurs and thrills, its spaciousness, its suspensefulness, its heroics, its nuances, its lingo, its'characters,' its peculiarly hypnotic tedium'. . . The genius of the novel is in how Coover revels in the sun-bright vitality of the world Waugh has created, full of drink and lust and dirty limericks and doubles down the line -- and yet brings Waugh face to face with its darkest truths." --The New York Times Book Review