An exploration of the often-fraught relationship between fathers and sons is at the heart of Bob Levin’s baseball-themed novel Away Game.

It’s the story of Hank Bauman who, through the magic of an old baseball board game, is transported from the present to 1955, to Game 7 of the Yankees-Dodgers World Series where his father rooted on his beloved Dodgers – before his accidental death later that day, when Hank was two years old. Or so the story goes. The reality turns out to be very different, and Hank sets off through the 1960s to track down his runaway father, who’s threatened for real this time.

Set largely in Middle America in the mid-1960s – as racial tensions and the Vietnam War are starting to unsettle the country – “Away Game” is about blacks and whites, past and present, love and longing, about the curious bonds of family despite decades of separation – about baseball as common ground.