If you like horses (I don't) and creative grammar, this book may be more appealing for you than it was for me. I could see this novel as one assigned to a college English class, and it might make a good book club choice, especially for groups located in the mid-western US, where the decline of small towns and rural communities is a major issue. I found the ending unsatisfying and the whole novel was a bit too steeped in symbolism for my taste, but it was still a decent novel, maybe more of a 3.8 star rating than a 4, but again, for someone who likes horses and poetry disguised as prose, this is more of a 4-star book.

I won my copy of this book through a Goodreads giveaway. ( )

Marvel and a Wonder by Joe Meno is the story of 71 year-old Jim Falls whose farm is failing, whose daughter is an addict, and whose mixed-race grandson is a sensitive, oddball of a kid who immerses himself in a world of video games and breeding exotic pets; a kid who Jim just can't relate to other than with passing pity. Into this bleak landscape drops an unexpected inheritance of unknown origin, a white race horse, a speeding beacon of hope that brings grandfather and grandson together and might well be the end of the family's financial difficulties. Fate can't leave the Falls family alone, though, so naturally (spoiler alert?), some wretched miscreants steal the horse.(Okay, I'm done with the spoilers now.)

Marvel and a Wonder is well written, starkly depicting mid-western landscape and unlikeable characters with convincing realism. My biggest problem with Marvel and a Wonder is that it is *too depressing.* I have a penchant for dark, depressing books, but only if I can find a kernel of hope in them. Meno seems to make a grab for that hope at the end, but it seems too little and too late. After a few hundred pages of desperately wanting something better for this struggling family, seeing it fall into their lap, and then slip from their grasp, what little resolution and closure Meno provides simply isn't enough. ( )

This is a very brutal story, very different from what I’d normally read. But something in the description kept me coming back to look at it, and finally I couldn’t resist. I’m glad I didn’t; once I started reading the book, I couldn’t put it down.

Jim Falls, widower and chicken farmer, is fighting a losing battle with the bills. The electricity is about to be shut off. His daughter is a drug addict who steals things from her dad and eventually abandons her 16 year old son as she chases the next high. The son, Quintin, is biracial with no idea who his father is. He is, despite his chaotic upbringing, a sweet youth. Extremely lonely – not much company for a biracial kid in a rural Indiana town that is economically dead- he plays video games and listens to NWA when not helping his grandfather with the chickens. He doesn’t actually have attitude; he cries when chicks die and demands they be given funerals.

Then a mistake by a legal firm executing an estate results in a gorgeous white quarter horse arriving on the farm. Rodrigo, the illegal worker on the farm, is the only one who knows what to do with a horse. The horse is a thing of beauty, and it turns out that the horse runs like the wind- and might be a way out of poverty for the Falls. Things are finally looking up. But of course this is a book where nothing can go right, and the horse is promptly stolen from the Falls, and Jim is shot. But Jim, veteran of the Korean War, is not going to let that stop him from getting that horse back. The main bulk of the book follows the multi-state pursuit, and the point of view switches between Quintin, Jim, the people who stole the horse, the soulless guy who takes the horse from them, and the girl that same guy is forcibly bringing back to her grandfather. The way it’s put together had me breathless to know how it was going to end, because so many forces were coming together. In the end, it’s a story of a growing relationship, a boy coming of age, of right against wrong. I might not have much liked the characters at the beginning, but in the end, I cared deeply about them. It’s brilliant. ( )

I could not put this book down. It is truly a marvel and a wonder! Joe Meno has written a novel about family, good v. evil, hope, and above all else, love. A grandfather and grandson journey to save their unexpected windfall of a racehorse. Along the way they fight for their very survival. The plot had me right to the end, the dark aspects were oh so dark, but the glimmer and shine of love and hope are always there, not in a sappy way at all. A marvelous read, a very well-written novel, and maybe even a classic in the making! ( )

I so wanted to like this book. I love books and horses. One of the few among my bookish friends. But this is just a book built on misery. Well written. But I felt like I was being swallowed by quick sand in a not so quick manner. Not a happy feeling and not a book I would have finished if I weren't reading to review. ( )