Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for providing a free audio arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Take this review with a grain of salt as it is not my typical historical fiction read. I listened to this throughout to give it a try, and I honestly should have DNF'd. This is NOT to say that this is a bad story at all, I myself just became very bored. It is very slow-paced and character driven with not much action throughout (I was hoping there'd be more with some of the games involved).

The one thing I did like about this story is that it does bring to light PTSD and depression that many WWII and Korean war veterans suffered (and to include anyone involved in war) and how it affected families. The narrator was good for this kind of story, but sort of contributed to the lull I had listening to it. Give it a try as you may like it, but unfortunately it was a miss for me.

The Northern is a coming of age story set in Ontario in 1952. A man takes two boys with him on a trip across the Northern League - the bottom rung of professional baseball - to sign the players up with a small, Utah trading card company trying to break into the league. Along the way, secrets are revealed, lies are told, and lives are changed.

I thought this book was good. It wasn't spectacular and I may not remember the details in a year, but I enjoyed the story. I especially enjoyed the narrator who was particularly good. The book was fine, it just wasn't spectactular

Thank you to NetGalley for the audio ARC!!

This is a moving, raw, sometimes funny, sometimes upsetting coming-of-age story. It's the story of three baseball card salesmen, one adult and two kids, who take a roadtrip across Canada from Minnesota in the early 1950s. They have been hired by a Mormon baseball card company out of Utah, and are working to find licenses for their cards-- men who they can put on baseball cards once they hit the big times in the major leagues. There is a lot of collective, unresolved trauma facing the post-WWII, Korean War generation in the story and Mooney does an excellent job of showing this with the background of bottom-of-the-rung Northern League baseball and two solid, good, but impressionable young men. He doesn't falling into 1950s nostalgia, but keeping things feeling realistic and almost contemporary.

I really liked the narrator for this book. His voice fit the story well. This is a slower book, and if you're looking for lots of action it might not be your thing. It's very character-driven, and has a lot of heart.