Baseball, soda-shop dates and the Red Scare

In her new novel, “The All American,” Susie Finkbeiner tells a wonderful tall tale of women’s baseball, apple pie, soda-shop dates and Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare of the 1950s. The author has hit it out of the park with her fictional account of a confusing era in American history.

The book revolves around the four members of the Harding family, who appear to be living the American Dream. Bertha dreams of playing for the Sweet Peas, a professional women’s baseball team. Her sister, Flossie, is an avid reader with a bright future. Their dad is a famous writer, and their mother holds down the home front.

Spoiler alert: Bertha lives out her dream, and Flossie is on the cusp of becoming an actress, but it all comes crashing down around them when their father is accused of being a communist and the family is forced to leave their hometown.

The author, who grew up in Lansing and attended Lansing Christian School and Great Lakes Christian College, points to the Michigan Notable Book Award she received in 2020 for her book “All Manner of Things” as the inspiration for her new publication.

“When I won the award, I wanted to read all the books by my fellow award winners,” she said.

One of them was David Maraniss’ “A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father,” a memoir about Maraniss’ father being named a communist in the 1950s.

“I was blown away by it. I had no idea the McCarthy hearings had roots in Michigan,” Finkbeiner said. “I then read ‘The Incredible Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League,’ and the two seemed to tie everything together.”

As she wrote in the book’s epilogue, “What’s more American than baseball? What’s less American than communism? What would happen if I put them together in a story?”

The author did what she always does when writing historical fiction: She began researching. She discovered the two subjects overlapped.

The book’s depiction of people’s views of communism in the era is accurate. Bertha’s development as a baseball player is countered by the teasing she endures from both the boys and girls at her school. When their father shows up on the Red Scare lists and is blacklisted, both Bertha and Flossie face relentless hate at school.

Their fellow classmates play “catch the commie” at lunch hour and chant, “Catch, catch, catch the commie, and hang her from the tree. That is how we get our daily glee.”

“The hardest part of writing the book was knowing how hopeless the situation was for a lot of people. It was horrifying to me,” Finkbeiner said.

The author also works her own love of reading into the novel through the voracious reading habits of Flossie, who’s a regular librarygoer. The book opens with Flossie reading “The Catcher in the Rye,” by J.D. Salinger, which Bertha bought because she thought it was about baseball.

“I chose some of my favorite books to put into the novel — both books to love and hate,” Finkbeiner said.

In one scene, Flossie overhears a librarian being chided for having books on the shelf that should be banned, including some by her father. The librarian stands up to the criticism.

“A real event like that happened here in the Grand Rapids area after I wrote the scene,” Finkbeiner said.

The author and her son were carrying a stack of books from the local library when someone stopped them.

“She said some of the books were questionable. I was very unhappy and told her she was barking up the wrong tree,” Finkbeiner said.

She also related how a group of parents riled against “The Giver,” by Lois Lowry.

“It’s a foundational book, and it shows the power of books. People get so afraid, and they haven’t even read the book,” she said.

Finkbeiner is well into writing her next book, which will be a fictional account of the folk era in the 1960s and ‘70s, following three young women in search of fame.

“I like folk music for its simplicity, and I will be building up my callouses so I can sharpen my guitar skills,” she said.