Bay Area-writer Emil DeAndreis’s compulsively readable novel, Tell Us When To Go, begins with an ending: the denouement of Cole Gallegos’s baseball career. A once-promising prospect destined to make millions, Cole develops a case of the “yips,” and his skills suddenly vanish. After a few months of struggle, and an impulsive early retirement, Cole escapes to his hometown of San Francisco with teammate Isaac Moss, a career benchwarmer who develops an unlikely friendship with the pitching ace.

Tell Us When To Go may begin and end with baseball, and it may center on a friendship forged through the sport, but this ambitious novel has an impressively broad scope that successfully subverts the traditional redemption arc familiar to sports fans. DeAndreis catches up with his protagonists well after their athletic careers have ended, when batting practice and 6 AM workouts are a thing of the past. As they exit the hyper-niche world of collegiate baseball, they enter into a post-recession San Francisco in the midst of technological and economic revolution.

Time and place are critical in this novel. Silicon Valley looms large, and much of the book takes place in the wake of the 2008 recession. Although the downturn happened scarcely more than a decade ago, the novel, which unfolds against the backdrop of a burgeoning internet culture, already feels like a period piece. Uber is just getting off the ground. Reddit is new to the scene. Tumblr still seems indistinguishable from Instagram. 

Cole, who suffered online abuse following his fall from grace, steers clear of the online world. But Isaac dives in head first when he takes a temp position at GO, a Silicon Valley startup seeking to digitally map the world. GO’s office includes everything from massage chairs and draft beer to surprise performances by indie rock bands. GO’s presence becomes increasingly ominous the longer Isaac remains a temporary employee, with no benefits or job security, and the author’s feelings about the tech world become transparently – and somewhat predictably – cynical, especially when Isaac develops friendships with two coworkers who are little more than tech bro caricatures. His new friends have a “shared religion of Springsteen and the Mets,” wear “glasses with circular rims,” and have “big-shot banker” and “Botox goddess” parents. 

DeAndreis’s disdain for the tech industry’s monoculture isn’t without merit, but his superficial depiction pales in relation to other, more resonant storylines. While Isaac is getting a foothold among software engineers swilling draft beer, Cole is getting a reality check in his new job as a paraprofessional at a San Francisco public school. At Seaside High, he is responsible for keeping track of senior Dizzy Benson, making sure she stays out of trouble long enough to graduate. Cole’s task may sound simple, but Dizzy’s permanent record includes everything from breaking a classmate’s tooth to throwing a brick through a classroom window. 

No one at Seaside expects Cole to stick around, but the former pitching prodigy develops an unlikely connection with Dizzy, who proves to be a sharp and quick-witted foil to the self-pitying Cole. The dialogue between the two sings with humor and authenticity, especially when Dizzy refuses to sympathize with the once-promising star pitcher. Seen through Dizzy’s eyes, his failure comes into appropriate perspective, especially when compared to her own itinerant, parent-less upbringing. “You ain’t break your arm?” Dizzy asks after Cole shares the story of his downfall. “You just gave yourself problems?” she continues. Cole responds that he essentially “forgot how” to throw strikes, missing out on a million-dollar payday. It’s the first scene in which Dizzy shows any interest in Cole and allows him speak uninterrupted, without insulting him. She shows a sneaky capacity for empathy, and they seem to be coming to some kind of understanding. But the budding concord is quickly nipped back. While most adults are thrown by Dizzy’s behavior, Cole remains unfazed. Somewhat tragicomically, Cole’ already dire emotional state has rendered him immune to Dizzy’s ridicule. When she insults him, which she soon does, she’s just kicking a dead horse. 

The stellar interplay between Cole and Dizzy is only exceeded by DeAndreis’s depictions of baseball. Although the novel repeatedly subverts its own sports-novel setup, DeAndreis’s mastery of the game still jumps off the page. As a former standout player—his second book, Hard to Grip, is a memoir of his career—DeAndreis clearly knows how baseball looks, sounds, and feels. Take, for instance, this flashback to Cole at the peak of his athletic powers, one out away from a perfect game:

The [applause] of the crowd [was] sharp, a sound akin to the thwack of a wood bat. Romantic, really. The batter stepped back into the box. Judging from his hyper little batting stance, this kid was the type who did all the little things coaches loved, like running hard nineties, laying down great bunts, diving for everything even if it was out of reach. I wanted to drill dudes like that in the back. 

Tell Us When To Go covers a lot of ground in its brisk 250 pages. The novel’s sheer ambition deserves recognition. But like any strength, the novel’s ambition is also a weakness. It’s easy to imagine reaching the end of DeAndreis’s book only to be unclear on which thread, exactly, is at the center.

But then again, such confusion is appropriate to the book’s millennial milieu. All twenty-somethings battle existential dread as they negotiate adulthood, but Isaac and Cole belong to a generation that did so at just the moment when social media was present but not yet prevalent, the internet widely available but not yet inescapable. They’re not just grappling with their place in the world; they’re grappling with what, exactly, a post-recession, increasingly online world even looks like. They never quite figure it out. It’s thrilling to watch them try. 

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Emil DeAndreis is the author of two prior books, Beyond Folly and Hard To Grip. His fiction has appeared in StoryQuarterly, The Barcelona Review and elsewhere. He teaches English at College of San Mateo, and lives in the Bay Area with his wife and son. 

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Michael Knapp’s writing has been published in the Cleveland Review of Books, Bridge Eight, The Bookends Review, and elsewhere. He’s from DC.