Praise for SWING - Winner of the 2016 IPPY Best Contemporary Fiction Gold Medal

“Philip Beard’s SWING is a novel to be savored.”

— SARA GRUEN, New York Times bestselling author of Water for Elephants and Ape House

“It wouldn't be fair or accurate to call SWING a sports book. It's too rare for that.”

— THE SPORTING NEWS

“SWING is richly rewarding...a tight, poignant coming of age novel...[that] will stay with you long after you put this book down.”

— SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

“Every character—the absent father, the troubled sister, the mysterious wonder that is John Kostka—feels alive due to Beard‘s skillfully simple prose and dialogue. …Philip Beard‘s other novels… have garnered some attention, but with SWING, Beard has hit it out of the park.”

— FOREWORD REVIEWS

“It’s at once heartbreaking, uplifting and emotionally resonant. In a word, it’s beautiful.”

— PITTSBURGH MAGAZINE

“…one of those rare works of fiction that will linger long in the mind, memory and imagination.”

— MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW

“Mr. Beard's swing here is just about perfect. In fact, he crushes it.”

— THE PITTSBURGH POST GAZETTE

“An exquisite novel so real you watch it rather than read it. Masterful, erotic and poignant, Swing is a movie waiting to happen.”

— TISH COHEN, bestselling author of Inside Out Girl and The Search Angel

“Like Chad Harbaugh in The Art of Fielding, Philip Beard uses baseball as a lens to view love and loss. Swing is a generous, heartfelt novel filled with imperfect characters worth loving, and a valentine to Pittsburgh and the great Pirate teams of Maz and Clemente.”

— STEWART O’NAN, award-winning author of Faithful and Emily Alone

“Philip Beard's new book arrives as a very rare achievement: a novel that feels truly and fully and enchantingly alive.”

— JOHN CLINCH, award-winning author of Finn and The Thief of Auschwitz

“In his wonderful follow-up to Dear Zoe, Philip Beard takes his readers to unexpected places with emotions as true and honest as ever. In prose that would make Richard Yates proud, Beard delivers a story of how we grow up, how we grow old, and how we grow into people we both love and hate.”

— LORI JAKIELA, award-winning author of The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious

“Swing is the work of a superb storyteller, infused with keen observation and the ache of nostalgia.”

— TASHA ALEXANDER, New York Times bestselling author of Death in the Floating City