Two brothers, a father figure, a post-war road trip through southern Ontario in a Hudson Hornet and baseball. Combined, these sound like the ingredients to some sweet syrup of sentimentality, shot in VistaVision with a score arranged by Nelson Riddle. What we get with Jacob McArthur Mooney’s The Northern, however, is something much deeper.
Set in 1952, the Trillium-award-nominated poet’s debut novel follows two boys, Chris and Mikey, as they accompany Larry “Coach” Miller on a trip through the cities in the Northern Baseball League. Their mission is simple, sign ballplayers to baseball card contracts on behalf of a Mormon company out of Utah. To compete with the two big baseball card brands of the day, Topps and Bowman, the Four Corners Baseball Card Company scoured the lowest leagues in professional baseball, signing players to a non-exclusive contract and paying five dollars for the rights to their image, should they make it all the way to the majors. It was a longshot, but one that seemed worth taking.
Told from the viewpoint of Chris, the older of the two boys, we follow them on the road from Minnesota with a man who had served with their father in World War Two and was now romantically attached to their mother. Throughout the journey, members of the trio pair up, isolating the third. The bond that seems like a given, that between the brothers, shears under several points of pressure, and the bonds between the boys and Coach are tenuous at best.
The Northern, which in a sense is a bildungsroman, serves also as an examination of contemporary masculinity.
The Northern, which in a sense is a bildungsroman, serves also as an examination of contemporary masculinity. In an era where the online “manosphere” played a crucial role in bringing Donald Trump back to the White House while flooding social media with posts about the “male loneliness epidemic,” McArthur Mooney uses the fifties to unravel toxic masculinity. As Chris travels from Windsor to Hamilton, Erie to Buffalo, he observes how men behave, how they interact with each other and with women. We meet Reg Law, an intelligent, charismatic and talented ballplayer, the one member of the Northern League that seems destined for bigger things, to perhaps don the pinstripes of the New York Yankees or the A with the sharp serifs of the Philadelphia Athletics. Yet it is his prowess with women that garners much of the attention of the novel. Law becomes an almost Andrew Tate-esque figure, one who seeks to show off his conquests to other men and boys around him. This comes as Chris is trying to understand his burgeoning sexuality, impulses to look down a waitresses’ dress or make conversation with the daughter of a baseball coach. Without a steady father figure in his own life to teach him how to be a man, it is easy to see how the social capital bought through seducing and exploiting women might teach Chris the wrong lessons. But countervailing influences, most notably that of his mother, with whom he checks in via telephone, help to keep him on the good and decent path.
Although female characters are few and far between in the novel, they make up some of the most memorable characters. As is so often the case in the real world, these women are forced to punch above their weight in the system of male mediocrity that thrives beneath the tent poles of patriarchy. Not only does the voice of Chris and Mikey’s mother hang low over the whole book, but the commissioner of the Northern League, Marthanne Eccles leaves a deep impression on the plot, the characters and the reader.
It’s clear that an incredible amount of research went into the depiction and detail of the setting. McArthur Mooney resurrects a bygone era not only with accuracy, but with a certain magic. His prose are crisp and clean, demonstrating the same clarity and ability to find le mot juste as he has demonstrated in is poetry. His characters arrive fully-formed and come to life with every detail and description.
McArthur Mooney resurrects a bygone era not only with accuracy, but with a certain magic.
The Northern captures the beauty of baseball, of summer afternoons, cleats on grass, concessions stands at the ballpark. The Northern is a worthy heir to W.P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe, managing a nod in the Canadian classic’s direction without being derivative. While Chris rides the team bus with an injured and heavily medicated Reg Law, Law asks “are you the angel of mercy … come to escort me to the next life?” Chris replies “I’m only going as far as Buffalo.” For lovers of baseball fiction, it’s impossible not to hear Shoeless Joe saying “this must be heaven,” and Ray Kinsella answering “no, it’s Iowa.”
Fans of baseball and collectors or former collectors of baseball cards will love this book, which is the perfect read for a ballpark on a summer afternoon. But more than that, it is a coming-of-age story set in the supposedly-idyllic past that manages to be a timely story for the present day. With this grand slam of a novel, Jacob McArthur Mooney, already a renowned poet, establishes himself as a prose MVP.
Read about how W.P Kinsella influenced Jacob McArthur Mooney in Jeff Dupuis’ Patreon column, “Under the Influence”.
Jacob McArthur Mooney’s work has been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Trillium Award in Poetry. An MFA graduate from the University of Guelph, he lives in Toronto with his partner, the novelist Alexis von Konigslow, and their son. The Northern is his fifth book and first novel.
Publisher: ECW Press (May 6, 2025)
Paperback 8″ x 6″ | 312 pages
ISBN: 9781770417823
Jeff Dupuis is a writer and editor living in Toronto. He is the author of The Creature X Mystery novels and numerous short stories, which have been published in The Ex-Puritan and The Temz Review among others. Jeff is the editor, alongside A.G. Pasquella, of the anthology Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction from the Future of Food, which will be published in 2025 by Dundurn Press.
