Safe at Home by Alison Gordon

Safe at Home by Alison Gordon (1990) - Kate Henry is back in Toronto after spending spring training in Florida with the Toronto Titans. Henry, having covered the team for several seasons, no longer finds Opening Day as exciting as it was when she started writing about the team for the Toronto Planet newspaper.

Setting the story firmly in Toronto is that
Opening Day is the Titans first game in a new stadium with a retractable roof. It is clearly modeled on the Skydome, now the Rogers Centre, which has been the home of the Toronto Blue Jays since 1989.

What does excite Henry is that she can resume her relationship with Staff Sgt. Andy Munro of Toronto Police Services. Putting the relationship on hold for two months while she was at spring training has been hard.

The joy of reunion is interrupted repeatedly as Munro is searching for a serial killer. Three boys have been taken and killed and sexually assaulted.

Munro is frustrated. The victims appear to be random choices. There is no way to protect a metro area with hundreds of thousands of young boys. Will they have to wait for more murders to gain enough information to find the killer?

Back at the ballpark Henry is writing about a transition at first base for the Titans when she gets a call from their outfielder Joe Kelsey.

The Titan player has decided to confide in her. Kelsey comes to her home with Sandy Montgomery. He startles Henry by telling her that he is gay and Montgomery is his lover. He wants Henry to write the story of his coming out to baseball and the rest of the world.

After confirming Kelsey understands the publicity storm that will erupt Henry is delighted to write the story. It will be a story that gets national and international attention. No active major leaguer has come out of the closet.

There is a degree of hesitancy as the day for publication approaches. There is as much apprehension as excitement for Henry.

The reaction to the story is mixed. Acceptance and tolerance and rejection are all present. In my next post I shall write further of the media story.

In an apt example of societal priorities Henry's story on Kelsey's coming out is given greater play on the front page of the paper than the story of the hunt for the serial killer.

Titan players and fans uncomfortable with Kelsey's story find the world has not changed because Kelsey is openly gay.

The book is well written. Not surprisingly Kelsey's coming out dominates the book. I read swiftly wanting to know how he was treated in a world of men not known for their sensitivity concerning sexual orientation.

The mystery was the weakest part of the book. It was not very mysterious. It is rare I can see the solution long before the end of the book. I appreciate it is not easy to have a credible character for the serial killer but there was not enough doubt about this killer. It might have been better to simply have identified the killer early on and made the plot about finding him.

****

Gordon, Alison - (2011) - Prairie Hardball; (2014) - Night Game; (2015) - Alison Gordon has Died