Cactus League

Set entirely during a single Cactus League spring training, this novel weaves together the perspectives of a fading star pitcher facing the end of his career, the team's disgraced and cash-strapped owner, and a handful of people orbiting the team — an organist, an agent's daughter, sports reporters — whose lives intersect in unexpected ways over the course of the season.

Emily Nemens builds the novel around baseball's off-season rituals and rhythms, using the sport's unhurried pace as a frame for stories about ambition, aging, and reinvention.