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<div><span style="display: inline-block;" class="_Entity _EType_OWALink _EId_OWALink _EReadonly_1"><span></span></span><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">All,</span></div>
<div class="elementToProof"><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Please find Lisa Timpf's review of
<i>Dugout to Peace </i>by Gary Morganstein, the third novel in his Dark Depths baseball trilogy</span></div>
<div class="elementToProof"><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<p class="elementToProof" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Lisa Timpf</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">72 Oak St.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Simcoe, Ontario</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">N3Y 3J8</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">email: lisa.timpf@gmail.com</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Word count: Approx. 785</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Morgenstein, Gary. A Dugout to Peace</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Morgenstein, Gary. A Dugout to Peace. (The Dark Depths, Book 3). Plymouth, MI: BHC Press, 2023. 552 pages. Price:
Hardcover $34, Softcover $22.95, Ebook $9.99.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Reviewed by Lisa Timpf</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">In A Dugout to Peace, Gary Morgenstein delivers the third and final installment in his dystopian, baseball-themed
Dark Depths trilogy. Fans of the earlier books will be happy to welcome back familiar characters like former baseball star Puppy Nedick, Annette Ramos, Elias Kenuda, and the irrepressible Clary Santiago, among others.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Morgenstein’s Dark Depths trilogy, which began with A Mound Over Hell and A Fastball for Freedom, is set in the
late twenty-first century. After World War III, Muslim powers have laid claim to a large chunk of the planet. In the United States, democracy has been abandoned as a failed experiment, and the country is led by The Family.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">In A Dugout to Peace, much of the action takes place in 2099. A Dugout to Peace adds some new twists, with the
feisty Clary Santiago taking over leadership as the Granddaughter. The disgraced Elias Kenuda and Albert Cheng, former baseball star and former leader of the Family as Grandpa, have taken up residence in a Disappointment Village, one of Morgenstein’s delightfully
satirical creations. Meanwhile, retired baseball great Puppy Nedick is appointed as baseball commissioner, taking over from the synthetic versions of Mickey Mantle and Ty Cobb.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The 2099 season started with a bang, but fan interest has been declining. Whipping up enthusiasm for the game
will be a challenge, particularly since Puppy suspects that the deck is</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">being stacked against him. Many of those higher up in the Family would be happy to see baseball quietly go away.
Puppy, who has a deep-seated passion for the game, isn’t willing to let it go gently. One of his strategies is to bring back features of the past world and society that have, up to now, been forbidden. Because things like fan adulation have been suppressed,
there are rules against people rooting for teams, chanting, or wearing team paraphernalia. Relics from the past have gone underground, after the Baseball Hall of Fame was ostensibly destroyed. Puppy attempts to push back some of these limitations, with mixed
results. As in some of Morgenstein’s earlier books in the series, baseball becomes a flash point for societal tensions. When a young man wearing red socks is killed by an overzealous ’bot enforcer, protests and acts of solidarity are triggered.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Morgenstein offers an interesting take on baseball of the future. For one thing, he portrays both male and female
baseball stars. One of the greatest talents of the 21st century is a pitcher named Mooshie Lopez, who also happens to be a tremendous singer. In A Dugout to Peace, there are also debates about what era of baseball was “best.” A Dugout to Peace features contests
between the 21st century stars and descendants of 20th century greats like Johnny Bench, Stan Musial, and Nolan Ryan.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">A Dugout to Peace includes multiple references to baseball history, and characters debate some of the rule changes
and amendments to the game.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Morgenstein also gives baseball a broader symbolic significance. Picking up on a thread from the earlier books
in the series, Annette Ramos is on a mission to find the Pope, who escaped into hiding. The hope is that the Pope can broker peace between the warring Muslim and Western forces. Could baseball have a role to play?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">While the baseball action is interesting in its own right, Morgenstein’s book is also enjoyable for its take
on future society. As in the previous books in the Dark Depths series,</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Morgenstein portrays a complex and thoroughly imagined future world in which Americans, out of necessity, consume
synthetic foods, and humans and robots have an uneasy co-existence. There are, for example, multiple levels of police robots. America has decided to deploy robot soldiers in an attempt to gain back some of the territory they lost to the Muslim forces. Synthetic
beings perform many tasks in society, including driving public transit, and some of them also develop their own motivations and the ability to make up their own minds about certain matters. In addition, attempts to transfer human consciousness to robotic bodies
have also seen some success, although Morgenstein chooses to give these constructs some limitations rather than endowing them with immortality.</span></p>
<p class="elementToProof"><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Perhaps it’s just me, but A Dugout to Peace felt more tightly plotted than the previous
two books, while at the same time continuing to deliver an intricately imagined dystopian world with unique, satirical, and often humorous quirks. Morgenstein’s humor has a way of making you grimace and laugh at the same time, but there is enough of an air
of plausibility that you can half-believe some of this could come true. Those who enjoyed A Mound Over Hell and A Fastball for Freedom will find A</span></p>
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