THE WAY TO STAY IN DESTINY

Music and baseball history combine to convince sixth-grader Thelonious Monk Thomas that Destiny, Florida, should be his hometown.

When Uncle Raymond, a Vietnam vet still hurting from the war and from his dead sister’s anti-war activities, brings orphaned Theo to Destiny in May 1974, he warns him not to get attached. But in Rest Easy, their new rooming house, Theo finds a piano to play and a determined landlady, dance teacher Miss Sister Grandersole, who encourages his musical gift just as energetically as his angry uncle discourages it. Theo also finds a friend in classmate Anabel Johnson, who loathes dance but loves baseball. She enlists him in a project to find evidence of major league baseball players who lived in town 20 years earlier. Did Hank Aaron once stay where Theo lives? Theo tells of his first weeks in Destiny in a not-completely-convincing first-person, present-tense narrative that moves quickly through the days, culminating in his accompanying a dance recital and finding a way to stay as well as a possible Hank Aaron sighting. It’s puzzling that no one mentions skin color, not even when characters talk about Aaron in the 1950s, when the “tall, skinny guy” would have been living and dining in accommodations separate from most of his teammates.

Doesn’t quite hit the right notes.