
John Irving is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter. Awards-American Book Award ( Garp) Academy Award Best Screenplay ( Cider House).Education-B.A., University of New Hampshire M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop.

The 1998 film version is titled Simon Birch, starring Jim Carey, Ashley Judd, Joseph Mazzello, Oliver Platt, and Ian Michael Smith. What happens to Owen, after that 1953 foul ball, is extraordinary and terrifying. The boy who hits the ball doesn’t believe in accidents Owen Meany believes he is God’s instrument.

One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy’s mother. In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys-best friends-are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire.
