High Heat- A baseball thriller about much more than baseball

High Heat. Carl Deuker, HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.

High Heat is a story about Shane Hunter, an up-and-coming baseball star at an elite private high school in the suburbs of Seattle. Shane lives a pampered life, residing in a mansion in a gated community. This is a result of the hard work and financial success of his father, who is a car dealership owner. Shane’s father is incredibly supportive of his baseball playing and is always present at the games. One day, however, Mr. Hunter is approached in the bleachers by police and arrested−he was being charged with money laundering. Shane endures incredible embarrassment in the days following his father’s very public arrest, yet he still believes his dad is innocent. He now finds that his father’s presence at his games causes him to pitch poorly, a theory confirmed by his excellent performance at a game that his dad missed. Trying to figure out a way to tell his father not to attend his games anymore, he drives home from his victory, but upon arriving on his street he is met with a slew of ambulances and police cars. To the disbelief of Shane and his mother and sister, his father had committed suicide inside their home.

Shane is devastated, mystified, angered, and intrigued by his father’s suicide; his emotional state causes him to quit the baseball team and to pass through the remainder of the school year apathetically. Following the suicide, Shane’s family loses nearly all of their money and possessions in a legal settlement, and Shane’s gated-community lifestyle to which he was accustomed transforms into his new residence in public housing in Seattle. He is incredibly bitter about his new environment and swears he’ll never play baseball again, certainly not for an inner-city public school. Yet he is swayed by some newfound friends to take up the sport again, leading to some intense moments when his new team faces his old friends from the private school in the city tournament. Is Shane able to maintain his talent? Or will the pressure and embarrassment of his old lifestyle overwhelm him?

I would highly recommend this book to middle school students, especially to boys who like baseball, as there are quite a few intense narrative scenes that are better understood by someone who knows the game of baseball well. However, I think that anyone could enjoy this book. It deals with intense themes that do not directly relate to sports; Shane continually struggles with the abrupt and drastic changes in his life following his father’s suicide, which often causes him to display angry outbursts both on and off the pitcher’s mound. He deals with poverty and becomes integrated into a diverse school environment that is foreign to him. Many students who have gone through a difficult move, divorce, death of a parent, or other tragedy will likely be able to relate to Shane’s emotions that he expresses throughout the novel. He ultimately uses his love of baseball to cope with his sense of abandonment following his father’s death; although it is a sports narrative, it deals with a lot more “heavy” issues than sports. My only concern would be that the suicide could be slightly bothersome to certain readers, so I would definitely monitor a student who was reading the book and discuss it with him or her to make sure that he or she was comfortable with reading about the suicide. I think this book would be better as an individual read. I believe that many students would find this book very enjoyable, as it is a page-turner with an exciting ending. Highly-recommended!