Novelist W.P. Kinsella, author of 'Shoeless Joe,' dies at 81 - Breitbart

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — Canadian novelist W.P. Kinsella, who blended magical realism and baseball in the book that became the smash hit film “Field of Dreams,” has died. He was 81.

His literary agent Carolyn Swayze said in a statement that Kinsella’s death on Friday in Hope, British Columbia was doctor-assisted.

In the 1982 novel “Shoeless Joe,” a farmer hears a voice telling him to build a baseball field. Key turns of phrases in his book —”If you build it, they will come” and “Go the distance” — have taken their place in literature’s lexicon.

Kinsella published almost 30 books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry and won the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest honors.

Assisted deaths became legal in Canada in June.