Silent E Publishing is delighted to announce the publication of Jeff Trippe’s newest book, entitled Dream. This novel tracks the calamitous and extraordinary events in the early life of a gifted young baseball player, Frank Treadwell, whose career and ambitions are sidetracked by his mother’s illness, his subsequent emotional breakdown, and his ultimate exodus from his hometown of Dillon, South Carolina.

In the course of his journey, Frank finds that he must not only endure a transient existence for a time, but he must also grapple with the foibles and complexities of his first real experience with love. The older and more experienced Alison MacDougal gives him the support and stability he needs to return to organized baseball as a prospect with the Cincinnati Reds’ minor league affiliate in Columbia, where his talent and desire propel him into the public eye.

All the while, Frank is unaware that there are those back in Dillon who remain concerned about his well-being and who await word of him, including his family’s longtime pastor, Luther Laite, and his oldest and best friend, Liza Applewhite (who has endured her own troubles). Thus, although he expects that he will never again see his childhood home on the Little Pee Dee River, Robert Frost’s remark that “home is the place where, when you have to go back, they have to take you in” proves true once more.

The action of the story takes place between 1958 and 1961, a formative time in modern American history, when racial tensions emerged on all fronts in the south, including (and despite the stunning career of Jackie Robinson) professional sports. Frank, who is white, finds friendship with his African-American roommate on the Columbia ball club, much to the scorn of some of his teammates.

Most of all, Dream articulates the resilience of the human will when faced with loss, and in Frank’s case, baseball - a game predicated in many ways upon failure - reflects the circumstances of his life.