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Gideon's best friend is called Stan a minor league baseball player who dreams, in spite of the march of time that he can still make it in Major League Baseball. Following his father's death, Gideon is informally adopted by his neighbors the Barons who also care for a Down Syndrome girl called Missy, for whom Gideon has a kind of brotherly affection. In the book both Maudie and Gideon's sister have long departed the family home, and we find out that his sister is on the run as an urban guerrilla. He accepts these periodic disappearances philosophically, and we learn of the parallel to his mother Maudie who was working in a traveling show when she met and married Gideon's father.

Gideon is married to Sunny, with whom he is deeply in love in spite of her habit of disappearing for long periods without an explanation other than her desire to be free. An almost subconscious knowledge of the events of 1908 shared by both Gideon and his father has been the root cause of their life long obsession as they strive, unsuccessfully' to validate what they believe to be the truth. Unfortunately, there is no shred of evidence that the Confederacy ever existed or that the game against the Cubs took place. Gideon has plenty of time to pursue his baseball obsession since his father (who was killed by being struck on the head by a ball at a baseball game) has left him in a financial position where he has no need to work.

His life in the small town of Onamata in Iowa in 1978 is dominated by his desire to prove the existence of the Iowa Baseball Confederacy, a minor league 'active' in the early part of the 20th century, and to show the world that a team from this league played against the Chicago Cubs in 1908. Gideon Clarke has two obsessions, baseball and playing the trumpet. However, it covers more themes than Shoeless Joe and it explores a greater number of plot lines. Like in Shoeless Joe, baseball is at the heart of the novel, which uses magic realism to blend events and individuals past and present with the author's love of the game. It is less well known than his novel Shoeless Joe, which came to prominence when it was made into the film Field of Dreams. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy is a 1986 novel written by Canadian author W.P.