Three Strikes

About the Book

Three Strikes is the story of Marisol, a young Latina newcomer to a small community who struggles to find her niche as a volunteer softball coach and paid art teacher. During the three years of the story, she acquires a series of intangible successes that assuage the gradual destruction of a more tangible but elusive success. The ineluctable consequences of “thinking like a woman,” as one character accuses, force Marisol to adjust her goals and dreams. Though she sees herself as an “insider,” she is continuously pushed back by those who persist in viewing her as an “outsider.” Her unique coaching style vexes some of the community stalwarts—the real “insiders.” Navigating a world that seems to be filled with allies or enemies challenges Marisol to preserve her sense of self-worth within a community of people whose complexities resist such dichotomization.

About the Author

Renee Gravelle has been writing since she was nine years old and has wished she could be a professional baseball player at least that long. She has worked as a dishwasher, waitress, bartender, basic skills teacher, document coding clerk, shoe saleswoman, college instructor, Girl Scout executive, YWCA program director, and librarian. Her favorite jobs are the ones that involve reading and writing. She lives in Western New York with her favorite human, feline, and canine companions and is writing a second novel, a work of historical fiction set in upstate New York's burned-over district in the nineteenth century.