Vermont Author to Visit Village Books

Howard Frank Mosher is a longtime baseball coach and long-suffering Boston Red Sox fan, so it didn’t take too much time for him to finish his latest book, ‘Waiting for Teddy Williams,’ which started showing up on bookstore shelves last week. Already the novel has received rave reviews from a number of credible sources, including the Chicago Sun-Times and Portland Oregonian. Mosher will visit Village Books (1049 Swarthmore Avenue) at 7:30 Monday night to autograph copies of the novel and present a slideshow entitled ‘Baseball and the Writing Life,’ during which he will compare baseball and writing. ‘The idea came to me in a flash when I drove by a kid looking out a barn door window,’ says Mosher, who lives in Irasburg, Vermont. ‘I pulled into a nearby McDonald’s, let my thoughts flow and outlined the whole book in about 15 minutes.’ Palisadian Bob Vickrey, the local representative for publisher Houghton Mifflin, suggested Mosher visit the Palisades to promote his book on the West Coast: ‘He has written eight other books and I had heard about the success they’ve had out east,’ Vickrey said. ‘I thought it would be cool to have Howard come here and discuss his latest masterpiece because he’s a fabulous writer.’ ‘Waiting for Teddy Williams’ is Mosher’s ninth book. Two others have been made into movies, ‘Stranger in the Kingdom’ starring Martin Sheen and ‘Where the Rivers Flow North’starring Michael J. Fox and Rip Torn. Last year, he published ‘The True Account,’ a comic novel about the Lewis & Clark expedition. Mosher’s fantasy tells the story of Ethan Allen, an 8-year-old boy from Kingdom Common, Vermont (the spiritual home of the Red Sox Nation), who is consumed with two things: finding out the identity of his father and playing for the Red Sox. ‘This is the creation myth of every baseball fan,’ says Bill ‘Spaceman’ Lee, a Red Sox pitcher from 1969-78. ‘E.A. is as lovable as Huck Finn.’ ‘We’re happy to have Howard coming,’ says Village Books owner Katie O’Laughlin. ‘People will love the magical, quirky character he creates. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and Howard is a charming man.’