Sponsor
Portland State University. Department of English
First Advisor
Gabriel Urza
Date of Publication
Spring 5-30-2018
Document Type
Closed Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) in Creative Writing
Department
English
Language
English
Subjects
Father and child -- Fiction, Farm life -- Colorado -- Fiction, Baseball players -- Fiction
DOI
10.15760/etd.6329
Physical Description
1 online resource (i, 211 pages)
Abstract
It is the time of war in Vietnam, of civil rights trailblazing, of social upheaval, and Kurt and Ellis Frye, an immigrant father and his first-generation American son from the small farming town of Homer, Colorado, are forced to navigate the changing American West in absence of one another. After discovering an aptitude for pitching--especially the volatile knuckleball--Ellis takes it upon himself to become a professional ballplayer, leaving the wheat farm he was to inherit from his father and starting off across the country on a journey that will force him to encounter what it means to be an authentic person. Meanwhile, Kurt, his health failing, struggles to tend the farm on his own, forced to realize the gravity of loneliness in both the departure of his son and the death of his wife. The unpredictable flow of life brings the two back together, and, burdened with the choice of whether or not to reclaim the home they built together, discover one another's autonomy, the life they knew not. A Lonely Place Where the Heart Beats Loud is a story about baseball, of farming, of life in a changing America, but more importantly it examines what it means to experience homecoming and what we inherit from those we care for.
Rights
In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/25683
Recommended Citation
Kessler, Benjamin Richard, "A Lonely Place Where the Heart Beats Loud" (2018). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 4445.
https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.6329
Comments
This thesis is only available to students, faculty and staff at PSU.