Rat Palms

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Rat Palms is a baseball-themed novel published in 1992 by David Homel (born 1952), an American writer living in Canada. Ironically, the novel has been more successful in its French translation, after it was published by French editor Actes Sud in its prestigious "Babel" paperback collection, than in its original language.

The novel's main protagonist is a teenager called Timmy Justice who lives on the Isle of Hope, near Savannah, GA. Kicked out of his Catholic boys school just before graduation for breaking the school's strict disciplinary rules, he is given a chance by Father Damian Dooley to redeem himself if he submits a full written report on his period of reflection about his trespasses. That task sets Timmy on a journey of self-seeking, and particularly of trying to understand his origins. His mother, Evangeline Marster, comes from a prominent Southern family, whose antebellum mansion is now a local museum, while her father, Timmy's grandfather, is a respected figure in the city. However, he is more fascinated by his absent father, who is considered a bit of a black sheep by his mother's family, because he is both a Northerner and a baseball player.

Zeke Justice is a pitcher who toiled for Savannah's South Atlantic League team, the Savannah Indians, when he met Timmy's mother; he has since made it to the big leagues, where he was of course continually on the road, but has fallen on hard times, and is now back pitching for Savannah, where he describes himself as the "Satchel Paige of the Sally League". He is indeed infamous for maintaining close relations with the city's black community, who has in return given him a trophy in appreciation, which is one of Timmy's most prized possessions; that closeness with local blacks does nothing to endear him with his father-in-law, however. While pitching, he is knocked on the head by a batted ball and seems to lose his mind, as he is found speaking gibberish on a pretend pitching mound on the streets of the city. Timmy finds out that his father's real name is Elzéar Lajustice, and that, it turns out, he is originally from at a small farming town called Sainte-Perpétue in Quebec, from which he concludes that the gibberish was likely his boyhood French.

Zeke's erratic behavior is the final straw that convinces Timmy's mother, Evangeline, to break with her roots, and she heads on a westward road trip with Timmy in tow (and driving most of the way). However, for Timmy, California turns out to be no promised land but an empty paradise, and he leaves his mother to rebuild her life there and takes a train back to Savannah. He seeks to connect with his father again, attempting to take him to Callibogee, a small town up the coast which is described by the local black community as a pastoral Eden. But before he can leave, his grandfather, irate at the scandal Zeke has brought on the family, metes out his own form of divine justice, shooting Zeke and turning the weapon on himself, thus depriving Timmy of both of his father figures.

Rat Palms is very much in the tradition of the apprenticeship novel (or Bildungsroman, to use the literary term), in which a young man undergoes life-shaping experiences that make him an adult; it is combined with a road novel, with Timmy's quest for his identity the driving force.

Further Reading[edit]

  • David Homel: Rat Palms, HarperCollins Canada, Toronto, ON, 1992. ISBN 978-0006474050
  • Michel Nareau: Double jeu: Baseball et littératures américaines, Le Quartanier, Montréal, QC, 2012, pp. 120-125, 202-211 and 244-249. ISBN 978-2-923400-91-4