Chaper 1 of a new novel from the Los Angeles Times best-selling author of “AMP’D,” runner-up for the 2017 Thurber Prize for American Humor.
In 1989 a young Soviet hockey player defects to the West, where he hopes to see Cats, meet Mayor Ed Koch, and win the Stanley Cup. He’s surprised to find himself not in New York City but Buffalo, New York — where none of those things are likely. Instead, he falls in love with the music of Rick James, “Fight the Power,” and the beautiful sister of his roommate, the Buffalo Sabres’ truculent enforcer and the…
On the evening of June 19, 1969, attorney John Paul Stevens was playing catch with his youngest daughter, Sue, on the lawn of his home in Chicago’s modest Beverly neighborhood when the phone call came that would change his life.
Across town, Stevens’s beloved Cubs had just returned home after suffering a string of defeats on the road. These were the Cubs Stevens, 49, knew best: perennial losers, a ballclub that serialized disappointment across decades. …
KEN PISANI is an Emmy-nominated producer, screenwriter, playwright and novelist. His novel “AMP’D” was runner-up for the 2017 Thurber Prize for American Humor.