Will Weaver Books In Order

Publication Order of Billy Baggs Books

Publication Order of Memory Boy Books

Publication Order of Motor Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Will Weaver is a young adult and contemporary fiction author from the American Midwest. His contemporary and fiction novels have earned the writer praise and he has been called an author of unique but natural talent by Los Angeles Times Book Review’s Frank Levering. His writing aimed at teenage readers has also been widely praised for its themes. Weaver decided to write young adult fiction after he published an adult novel and short story collection that would come very successful. He also published the “Billy Baggs” series of novels that are centered on the character of a farm boy with a fast and mean pitch with dreams of making it big in the baseball circuit. Weaver’s novels are characterized by a nuance of death and detail.

Weaver was born in the Midwest near the small town of Park Rapids Minnesota. His family ran a 150-acre dairy farm and he was one of three children that went to the local country school. He was born to devout parents with devout Christian beliefs and of Scandinavian descent that saw little use for modern contraptions such as TV. Farm life is hard but there were advantages to it including the fact that there was freedom for the children, a lot of work every day of the year, and independence galore. At a very young age, Will Weave could drive the family pickup truck and go hunting or fishing since he did not have the distraction of TV. This meant that he had a lot of time for getting outside, working his imagination, and getting things done. The books he loved to read during this time that sparked his early interest were condensed Readers Digest books. When he was in high school he went to a Park Rapids urban school and this is when he felt that he was disadvantaged given his less sophisticated provincial schooling. However, he was a good student even though he preferred being in nature rather than poring over papers and books on a desk. Nonetheless, one of his teachers encouraged his appreciation and writing of literature. The interest from the teacher who showed him that he had abilities and talents would alter his direction and ultimately lead him to become an author.

As a teenager, Will Weaver went to the University of Minnesota and Saint Cloud State University and then graduated with a bachelor’s degree. After graduating from college, he moved to San Francisco and began to write about his loneliness being away from his home in the Midwest. His early sketches soon became short stories and on the strength of a few of his shorts, he was admitted to the prestigious writing program at Stanford. But he still felt like an outsider at Stanford as he thought himself just a Midwest rube with a few pages of short stories. Most of his classmates were the daughters and sons of famous authors or had published in major magazines which, was quite disconcerting. It was a traumatic experience but he managed to graduate and soon began working as a technical writer in a high-tech company in Silicon Valley in California. Weaver would go back home to Minnesota and ran his father’s ranch for two years before he quit as farm life no longer held any appeal. During this time, he got a job teaching creative writing at Bemidji State University and also began compiling his short works into a novel that would become his debut “Red Earth, White Earth” that would become his debut novel.

Will Weaver’s debut novel “Striking Out” is a great novel that combines real-life problems with sports. He does this through Billy Baggs’s relationship with his father Abner. He is a very strict man who sees anything that is outside farm work as a waste of time and resources. The reader sees the struggle between Abner and Billy when the son says that he wants to play baseball. Weaver does a good job in creating a sense of potential accomplishment by using Billy’s exceptional baseball skills. He asserts that Abner is wrong, especially when it involves anything not to do with farming. However, he seems to change his stance towards the end of the novel when he decides to go to the last game of the season in which Billy is saying. His father has always wanted him to help on the farm as he is severely shorthanded or so he says. He may be softening his stance on letting him play baseball but they still do not have the money to buy the necessary sports gear. Since he does not have the money to pay for a jersey and hat, his coach allows him to paint his house to get the money to buy them. Through this gesture, a relationship is formed between the two and this adds another layer to the story as it evolves.

“Farm Team” by Will Weaver continues the story of Billy Baggs who has to delay his dream of playing baseball and work on the farm. Abner his father is arrested and with no one left to manage the farm, he takes over working harder than he had ever done. It is a tough time for the lad as he remembers losing his brother Robert in a farm accident. He had been his brother and closest friend that had helped mold him into what he is today. When summer comes around, Billy goes along with his mother and their dog Skinner to the pastures and she suggests that he make a baseball field out in the wild. So between his visits to the feed mill and the county jail, he spends much of his time making a baseball diamond on the pastureland. Once he is done preparing the field, the farm residents gather round on Friday nights to enjoy watching them play. One of the regular attendees to the games was the town team’s coach who would come every Friday without fail. Things had been going well until the town team invited the farm team’s coach to play against his team. In town, Billy spots the girl of his dreams and this gets his mind off the game, putting into question whether he can perform at his best while distracted.

Will Weaver’s “Hard Ball” continues to follow Billy Braggs a teenage boy that has ambitions of playing baseball. As a teenager raised on a farm alongside his parents, there are many things he has to go through at that age. There is a lot of drama with his mother and father and the typical school drama and the only thing that kept the stress at bay was the work he had to do. One of his favorite activities was tossing apples into buckets next to an old abandoned barn in the backyard. Growing up, he loved baseball but he was never on good terms with Ken King who played for his high school and became a pitcher when he went to university. Ken was very upset when Billy impressed the high school coaches with his talent. He felt threatened when the coaches immediately decided to recruit Billy into the team. Ken became very competitive and almost antagonistic when he saw that Billy had the same skills that he had and could very easily take his position.