The Northern: A Novel

“The Northern is both a tender-hearted, contemplative coming-of-age novel and adventure-filled road trip story that brings a unique time in sports history to life.” — Zoe Whittall, author of The Fake and The Best Kind of People

“W.P. Kinsella has company: Jacob Mooney has written another classic Canadian novel about baseball.” — Ben Lindbergh, co-host of Effectively Wild and author of The MVP Machine and The Only Rule Is It Has to Work

It is the summer of 1952 and three men — well, one man and two boys — are on a spiritual and commercial mission. Dispatched from Minnesota to Western Ontario, they have been hired by an upstart Mormon baseball card company to find licensees for their products among the young men filing out Korean War–era rosters in the Northern League, at the bottom-most rung of professional baseball. What the Northern has for them, and the secrets and deceptions they have for each other, will drive their two weeks in Canada into ever-growing chaos.

With a world shaped by the trauma of World War II and the generations of deflated adults and orphaned children left behind by it, The Northern sets out on a clear-eyed and psychologically precise character study taking on grief, fantasy, adolescence, and family. As the narrator for this story of salesmen and ambitious athletes, 12-year-old Chris is a budding acerbic, able to be carried away by the — often empty — hopes of others and put his feet in the ground to stop them.

A novel concerned with sports, labor, growing up, and God, The Northern is a funny and heartbreaking book about the series of disappointments that characterize the progress of growing up.

Jacob McArthur Mooney’s work has been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Trillium Award in Poetry. An MFA graduate from the University of Guelph, he lives in Toronto with his partner, the novelist Alexis von Konigslow, and their son. The Northern is his fifth book and first novel.

ISBN: 9781770417823
Format: Paperback
Pages: 312
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: May 06, 2025

“The Northern is a novel about a 12-year-old boy peeking around the corner from childhood to see the next room in life — the grungy, shadowy room of adult men. In this thoughtful, moving, surprising novel, Chris travels around the Great Lakes with his little brother and his mom’s boyfriend, pursuing baseball and glimpsing some hard truths about work, sex, religion, money, and how far our dreams might or might not take us. Mooney has lovingly recreated the world of 1950s Canada, from the diner food to awkward honeymooners at Niagara Falls, and to journey through it with Chris is a joy and an education. The Northern is a novel I’ll be thinking about for a long time.” — Rebecca Rosenblum, author of These Days Are Numbered and So Much Love“The Northern is both a tender-hearted, contemplative coming-of-age novel and an adventure-filled road trip story that brings a unique time in sports history to life. Fans of Mooney’s poetry will recognize his trademark wit and keen eye for detail in this stunning debut.” — Zoe Whittall, author of Wild Failure and The Best Kind of People“W.P. Kinsella has company: Jacob Mooney has written another classic Canadian novel about baseball. Like Shoeless Joe, though, The Northern uses baseball as a backdrop for deeper ruminations. Dreamlike and lived-in, heartwarming and harrowing, universal and specific, The Northern works the same emotional magic as sports, maybe baseball most of all. It makes human failure fascinating.” — Ben Lindbergh, co-host of Effectively Wild and co-author of The MVP Machine and The Only Rule Is It Has to Work