“Faith, Hope, and Baseball” is the debut novel of Richmond writer Jim Meisner Jr, who graduated from Gloucester High School in 1985.

“I began the story more than 20 years ago as a screenplay when I lived in Iowa,” Meisner said in a release. “Iowa has the largest population of Amish west of the Mississippi River, and the kids play a lot of baseball. A postcard of Amish kids playing baseball gave me the story idea.”

In the book, Jason is an extraordinary baseball player, but he’s also Amish. He must choose between his Amish life and the outside world, knowing that if he leaves, he may never return to the only life he’s ever known.

“I worked on the novel periodically over the decades, but when my daughter was born in 2014, I got serious about it,” Meisner said. “While I was editing it, I showed the novel to anyone who would read it, and I continued to rewrite it for years. I made changes up until the month before it was printed.”

Meisner was the editor of the North Liberty Le...