A SINGLE HAPPENED THING
“Daniel Paisner paints the corners with a story that re-imagines the life and death of one of baseball’s forgotten legends and pushes us to consider what it means to leave a mark.” - Ron Darling, author of “The Complete Game”
It's the late Nineties on the Upper West Side and book publicist David Felb (née Felber, née Felberstein) can sense his world shrinking. He is stuck in the slow lane at "a venerable second-tier publishing house" and feeling the encroaching changes technology will bring as he struggles to maintain a bond with his wife and three young daughters. Into the void steps Fred "Sure Shot" Dunlap, a tweed-clad, waxed-mustached nineteenth-century baseball legend with still-impeccable timing who died penniless and obscure and seems to need something from Felb. Or is it the other way around?
Daniel Paisner's enchanting new novel about neurosis, intimacy, and balancing familial needs while juggling two careers and the demands of modern life is also a charming and memorable parable about losing your mind and finding yourself in the age of anxiety.
“A Single Happened Thing couldn't be more in my wheelhouse. The novel features a 'wax-mustached nineteenth century baseball legend,' a struggling creative type in the 1990s, and a Bob Dylan epigraph. Truly a trifecta sure to warm my baseball/writer heart.... Nostalgically charming for anyone who has loved the game of baseball..." - Daniel Ford, author of “Black Coffee” and host of the Writer's Bone podcast
"Daniel Paisner's A Single Happened Thing is an engaging novel that weaves past and present with baseball and life, in a tone of surety and warm humor..." - Meg Nola, Foreword Reviews
"If you love the history and mysticism of baseball - 'magic, of a curious kind' - and are of the mind that a 120-year gap between ballplayers can sometimes be easier to bridge than the gulf between a husband and wife, a father and his teenage daughter, or a man and his desire for a legacy, then you'll love A Single Happened Thing as much as I did. Guaranteed to leave you in a pucker... in the best of ways!" - Tom Rock, Newsday, author of “Game Seven”
". . . a poignant and whimsical story about a man, David Felb, stalled at middle age, who anxiously doubts then gives himself over to the possibility of a fantastical visitation upon his unremarkable life. The central question Paisner asks via Felb's story is, What happens when you are carried into a nether realm of anything-goes, and your loved ones are not willing to come along with you?. . . Paisner's novel walks the sad, beautiful line that children walk when they love both parents and know that 'sides' are forming..." - Sonya Chung, The Millions