THE BIG BREEZE

Joseph “Breeze” Bye, a wheelchair-bound former professional baseball player, is on the cusp of finding major success in his second, post-accident career: painting. Breeze paints portraits of great pitchers—players who are as good as he was, before he was the victim of a hit-and-run. As a major exhibition of his work in New York City approaches, he gets a call from a former associate who confesses to being the person who ran him down. This admission kicks off the protagonist’s examination of his own life, told from a close first-person perspective in a long series of free associations; the narrative manages to maintain a tight focus while touching on a surprising variety of recollections. Breeze slowly unpacks his athletic career, his marriage, his extramarital affairs, his trajectory as an artist, his relationship with his daughter, and the circumstances surrounding his disability. The varied facets merge and dissipate with a flowing, casual logic that never leaves the reader behind. The entire story has a hazy, winding quality to it, which combines well with the complicated, messy events of Breeze’s life. Fechter paints his protagonist with deep sympathy and nuance, but also with unwavering honesty. Breeze’s narration follows his process of trying to make sense of past and present events, as well as his journey from self-pity to an understanding that his self-centeredness has limited his connection to the world and his relationships with those closest to him. At times, the multiple threads might threaten to overwhelm the reader, but Fechter always manages to tie everything back to Breeze’s quest for greater awareness.