Fast Greens

Twenty-seven years after his partner in a fledging oil company cheated him out of the CEO spot by sinking a hole-in-one blindfolded, a still-disgruntled Texan calls a grudge match. A thirteen-year-old boy, Billy Hemphill, is the caddie. Through his eyes a remarkable, boisterous, and eccentric cast of characters walk the nine holes with the two players and learn some lasting lessons about what really matters. Caught up in the vicious match, Billy is immersed in a world of liars, cheats, and hustlers as he searches for life's simple truths and for the father he's never had.

Debut novel, originally self-published, by a Texas Monthly contributor who mostly avoids the hokey near-religious overtones often attached to his sport--golf--overtones similar to those often attached by baseball writers to theirs. Pipkin occasionally slips up, but mostly his linkster's coming-of-age yarn is snatched from the abyss of the excessively reverent by some colorful local characters, a lost-father riff, and the author's dead-on ear for Lone Star State dialogue. Set in 1965 and filtered through the perspective of 13-year-old caddie Billy Hemphill, the story is mainly about a nine-hole grudge match between Roscoe Fowler and William March. The two had played 27 years earlier, on a desolate Texas plain, for ownership of their oil company. Fowler won by sinking a suspicious hole-in-one in utter darkness, and March has never gotten over the insult to either his game or his ego. The foursome now is fleshed out by Fowler's odious ringer, Carl ``Beast'' Larsen, a tremendous player, and March's second, a brilliant but troubled young Hogan-wielder named Sandy Bates. Age and power thus collide with nobility and beauty: Fowler is old and mean; March is a gentleman cowboy. Billy is carrying for Beast, however--at March's behest, a strategy designed to keep the bad guys honest. Maybe. As the match progresses, the wager is changed and new wagers are made; harsh words are lobbed, and skillful--at time dazzling--shots are executed on both sides, equipment is destroyed, and Billy's mother drops in to unload a doozy of a revelation. Then a real reckoning looms for Sandy and Billy both, and not all may be as it seems. A paean to the Scottish game of sticks and flags with authentic lingo, a solid structure, and plenty of old-fashioned masculine wallowing in the transcendent metaphor of silly games. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Check out the audio version, read by the author, from American Audio Literature.