Shoeless Joe

By: W. P. Kinsella

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Shoeless Joe, the soul-stirring novel on which the movie Field of Dreams is based, is more than just another baseball story. Kinsella captures the spiritual dimension that baseball represents for its most determined devotees in this tale of love and the power of dreams to make people come alive.

“Shoeless Joe” is the great Joe Jackson, one of the eight members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox who were banned from baseball for throwing the World Series. One day, while out in his corn field, Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella hears the voice of a baseball announcer saying, “If you build it, he will come.” “He,” of course, is Ray's hero, Joe Jackson. “It” is a baseball stadium, which Ray carves out of his corn field.

©1982 W. P. Kinsella (P)1991 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Wild...romantic...unconventional....A triumph of hope.” ( Boston Globe)

ok movie better

book was good and fills in a lot of holes from the movie. the book just got a little weird.

Good story, mediocre narration

I liked the story, very magical and nostalgic. The narration wasn’t great but it got the job done.

Field of Dreams is better

This is one of the few times the movie is better. Not a bad book but the ending was very blah.

A thoroughly American novel

The book is less streamlined than Field of Dreams - there's at least 1.5 times as much story here - and a lot of the stuff that didn't make the script is cut from the same cloth. It's thoroughly American, spiritual and unapologetically sentimental. Kinsella came up with all of the scenes you love if you love the movie. It's all his story. The only things I'd criticize is that it reads like he made it up as he went along, and that's especially apparent when it contradicts itself in one very important element of its mythology (what lies beyond the cornfield). It also wants the reader to respect baseball as a religion while showing an ugly contempt for other people's beliefs.

Real Fantasy Baseball

So much good stuff happened in this book. It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s sad, it’s heroic. This is the best portrayal of the magic and mystery of baseball I’ve come across. It is so well written and so representative of the unquestioned admiration men of that generation had for baseball and the men who played the game. Narrator hits a grand slam.