Description: A young boy is in love with the game of golf, but he doesn’t understand why. He has a natural talent and an enviable swing but playing the game well is not enough. There’s something missing.

Verdict: When Jimmy, the homeless man who spends his days cheering on golfers from his usual sitting spot just off the 5th green at Old Elm Municipal Golf course goes missing, the young boy becomes curious.

His quest uncovers Jimmy’s mysterious link to the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland and reveals a life in golf that not only fascinates but sends the boy on a personal journey to discover the magic of an ancient game and its deeper meaning for a young man doing his best to find his path in the world.

In what is a simply magnificent, wholly riveting, and yet gently told book from Berner, Sandman - A Golf Tale is chock full with surprisingly intuitive, and soothingly insightful notations - about life, friendships, and generalized perceptions, et al - that ensure the reader is hard pressed to put it down once their literary journey has begun.

Sure, it is made all the more easier to binge read this book, given that it is only 79 pages long, but that doesn’t mean that it is thin on anything that makes for a splendidly mesmerizing read.

Indeed, quite the opposite, for as our inquisitive young boy begins his curious quest into the disappearance of Jimmy, the pleasing rabbit hole that we are taken down is one we go willingly, and at all times intriguingly into.

Hard to put down, and even harder not to devour in the one sitting, Sandman - A Golf Tale is way more than a simple golfing story (so you really don’t need to know all that much about the game to enjoy this book), having its prose instead entangled within external things, such as amiable secondary characters from the greens and clubhouse, the caddies, the human desire for either aid or refrain, et al.

About the Author - David W. Berner is an award-winning author, broadcaster and journalist, whose career honors include the position of Writer-in-Residence at the Jack Kerouac Project and the Ernest Hemingway Foundation. He lives outside Chicago, Illinois.

Official Book Purchase Link