Electronic Edition: ISBN 978-1-58394-929-0

Copyright © 1990, 2007 by Darryl Brock. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without written permission of the publisher. For information contact Frog Books c/o North Atlantic Books.

Published by Frog Books,an imprint of North Atlantic Books

P.O. Box 12327 Berkeley, California 94712

Cover photo © Bobo/Alamy

Cover design by Gia Giasullu

Printed in the United States of America

If I Never Get Back is sponsored by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, a nonprofit educational corporation whose goals are to develop an educational and cross-cultural perspective linking various scientific, social, and artistic fields; to nurture a holistic view of arts, sciences, humanities, and healing; and to publish and distribute literature on the relationship of mind, body, and nature.

North Atlantic Books’ publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. and Faber and Faber Limited: excerpts from “Little Gidding” and “Burnt Norton” in Four Quartets, copyright 1943 by T.S. Eliot, renewed 1971 by Esme Valerie Elliot. Rights outside the U.S. administered by Faber and Faber, London. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. and Faber and Faber Limited.

Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.: epigraph from The Autobiography of Mark Twain, edited by Charles Neider. Copyright 1927,1940,1958,1959 by the Mark Twain Company. Copyright 1924,1945,1952 by Clara Clemens Samoussoud. Copyright © 1959 by Charles Neider. Reprinted by permission of Harper & Row.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brock, Darryl.

If I never get back: a novel / Darryl Brock,

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-58394-187-4 (pbk.)

ISBN-10:1-58394-187-8 (pbk.)

1. Cincinnati Reds (Baseball team)—Fiction. 2. Cincinnati (Ohio)—Fiction. 3. Baseball players—Fiction. 4. Baseball teams—Fiction.

5. Baseball stories. I. Title. PS3552.R58I3 2007 813’.54-dc22 2006100436