To say W. P. Kinsella's "Shoeless Joe" is a book about resurrection and baseball makes it sound foreboding and silly, and sometimes it is, but that doesn't matter at all….

Kinsella does wonders in this book: The visual fantasies are so rich that whether you believe them or not, you can't help imagining them. There is no resisting Ray Kinsella—the protagonist—and his first vision of baseball past….

Ray Kinsella is a fervently enthusiastic character. You might get tired of mawkish and too physical descriptions of his love for his wife and his insistence on the kittenish cuteness of his daughter. But when he's talking baseball, the enthusiasm is catching. In fact, it was enough to make this reviewer, whose only contact with the game is the memory of being hit on the head with a softball she was supposed to catch, love baseball herself for a...