Gary Soto has written six poetry collections, prose recollections, and several books of essays. His first young adult short story collection, Baseball in April and Other Stories, has been one of the most widely discussed and reviewed books of 1990. He is Associate Professor of Chicano Studies and English at the University of California, Berkeley.

In a prose that is so beautiful it is poetry, we see the world of growing up and going somewhere through the dust and heat of Fresno's industrial side and beyond: It is a boy's coming of age in the barrio, parochial school, attending church, public summer school, and trying to fall out of love so he can join in a Little League baseball team.
His is a clarity that rings constantly through the warmth and wry reality of these sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic, always human remembrances.