I am not sure what made me pick up this book from the library. I can’t find a review in the Saturday Reviews, and I don’t have the book on my TBR list. I am not a baseball fan. I had never heard of author Joseph Wallace, although he’s published several nonfiction books mostly on baseball history. Diamond Ruby is his first novel.

However, even though I’m not a baseball fan, I do like reading well-written books about baseball, especially fiction (see Fascination #23). So, I either read about this book somewhere and thought it sounded interesting, or I saw it on the New Fiction shelf at the library and thought it was worth a try. Either way I’m glad I found and got to read about Diamond Ruby.

In 1923 seventeen year old Ruby Thomas lives in Brooklyn. She has become responsible for the care and upbringing of her two nieces, ten year old Amanda and six year old Allie, since their mother is dead and their father is AWOL. Fortunately for Ruby and the girls, Ruby does have one freakish ability that she can parlay into cash: Ruby can throw a baseball faster and better than most men. In fact she’s just about as fast and accurate as the great Walter Johnson, maybe better.

As the story continues, Ruby’s life and livelihood become enmeshed in the politics of NYC, the enforcement of Prohibition, and the world of professional baseball. She becomes friends with baseball star Babe Ruth and heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey. She draws the enmity and disdain of the Ku Klux Klan and of baseball’s all-powerful commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis. She finds out that baseball, like many sports, has a dark side, and she finds herself a target for opportunists, gamblers, and gangsters who see her only as “a piece of meat” ripe for exploitation.

Such a good book. Diamond Ruby is a strong, courageous young lady with a talent that to her is physical aberration. Ruby has unusually long arms. In fact, the kids around where she lives growing up call her “Monkey GIrl.” Ruby figures her freakishly long arms are in great part responsible for pitching abilities, and she doesn’t know whether to hide her deformity as much as possible or to be thankful that it enables her to feed herself and her nieces. So part of the book is about self-acceptance and gratitude, themes that resonate with anyone but especially with young adults.

This book would be a perfect crossover book for adults and young adults, and it could appeal to lots of different subgroups of readers: those who read sports stories, or historical fiction, or feminist lit, or crime and suspense. It incorporates history and historical events such as the 1918 influenza epidemic, the opening of Coney Island, the death of President Warren Harding, Prohibition, the Yankees’ win in the 1923 World Series, and a heavyweight boxing match between Jack Dempsey and Luis Firpo. But Wallace never loses sight of the story to over-emphasize either sports or history. Diamond Ruby is a rollicking good story about an engaging character who wins the reader’s sympathies until we’re rooting for her both on and off the baseball diamond.