RPCV writer John Coyne
Best selling RPCV writer John Coyne has written a new novel: The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan that
draws on Coyne's passion and knowledge of the game of golf, and his life long fascination with Hall of
Fame golf professional Ben Hogan. The novel is published by St. Martins/Thomas Dunne books this spring.
Read about it at: www.thecaddiewhoknewbenhogan.com.
Filled with dazzling description of hole-by-hole match play drama, laced with stories from that
golden age of the sport, and glimpses of a secret love affair in the bedrooms of the vast club house,
The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan is a novel of friendship, great golf, and lost love.
Returning as an honored guest to the exclusive country club where he caddied as a boy, Jack Handley
remembers the summer of 1946 when he carried Ben Hogan's bag in the last Chicago Open. Now a respected
historian, he recounts, to the assembled sons and daughters of members he once knew, the dramatic match
played between the mysterious and charismatic Hogan and the young pro he idealized, and of the love
affair between the young home pro and the daughter of the club's president.
At the end of this magical summer, the club pro will win and lose at golf and love, and Coyne's
young caddie will learn lessons for life taught to him by one of golf's finest gentlemen and players
of the game, Ben Hogan.
In their March 27, 2006 review of the book, Publisher's Weekly writes
|
"Coyne's descriptions of the gripping first day of the Chicago Open are masterful sports fiction."
|
Of this novel, Norm Rush (Botswana CD 1978-83) and winner of the National Book Award for Mating says,
|
"...this novel achieves something remarkable: even to a confirmed non-golfer, the two fictional marathon golf
contests at the heart of the book are presented with such narrative skill, such compelling detail, and
such evident love of the game, that they are transfixing. That would be enough, but John Coyne has
managed to employ golf as a lens through which aspects of Midwestern daily life in the 1940's, of
thwarted love, of social class, are revealed with stark and unsettling clarity."
|
John Coyne, editor of Living on the Edge, fiction by Peace Corps Writers, served as a secondary
school English teacher in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 1962 to 1964 with the first group of PCVs to
that country. After his tour he became an Associate Peace Corps Director (APCD) in Ethiopia. In 1995
he returned to the Peace Corps as the Regional Manager of the New York Peace Corps Office where he
conceived and edited the first three essay books about the Peace Corps experience: To Touch the World,
At Home in the World, and Peace Corps: The Great Adventure. In the early 1980s, Coyne wrote an article
on the idea of RPCVs doing temporary overseas service naming them Crisis Corps Volunteers. This concept
of Crisis Corps Volunteers he saw implemented in 1997 by then Peace Corps Director Mark Gearan. Coyne,
who is considered an authority on the history of the Peace Corps, has written or edited over twenty
books including Going Up Country: Travel Essays by Peace Corps Writers. In 1987 he founded
[with Marian Haley Beil] RPCV Writers & Readers, a newsletter for and about Peace Corps writers which
can be found today on the web at: www.PeaceCorpsWriters.org. In 2002, [with Barbara Ferris,] he started
the non-profit foundation PeaceCorpsFund, to support Third Goal activities by RPCVs. Besides his Peace
Corps volunteer work and novels, Coyne is the Manager of Communications at The College of New Rochelle.
|
