I devoured this book in a day!! I normally don't have a lot of time for reading, but once I started this book, the rest of the world went away --- I could not put it down. Another fabulous story from a Cape Bretoner. Love it! ( )

I loved it!

vancouverdeb (in the next review) has said it so well...let me just second her review and recommend this beatifully written book. ( )

Where White Horses Gallop by Beatrice MacNeil is a book I highly recommend. Beatrice MacNeil is a Nova Scotian writer, and this book gives unique and very touching look into WW11.

It's beautifully written and takes place mainly in a small town in Cape Breton just before and during and after WW11. Three young men, all friends, join up to go abroad fight WW11. What makes this book so special is that it focusses on the family dynamics and struggles of the parents of the young men as they chose to go abroad and how each family responds to their son's going to war, returning from WW11 - if they do. I found it to be very realistic . There are some stories from the war front, but mainly the book focuses on the parents of the young men, and the young men themselves. PTSD and other effects of war are dealt with in this book. It's a very different look at war and I think a realistic one. There are no heroes - just people struggling to cope. It's very different from many other books that take a look at Canada's role in WW11 in that it does not focus on the war front, nor the girlfriends or wives left behind -but rather the young men and their familes.

I found it truly heart breaking and touching and came away feeling much sorrow. It's a beautiful book and one I highly reccomend.

5 stars. ( )

Beautifully written, Where White Horses Gallop is set in Cape Breton, NS. Three young men, all friends, enlist in Canada's military and set sail for Europe in 1941. MacNeil tells their story, and the story of their families. As Alistair MacLeod notes, "Beatrice MacNeil has a brilliant insight into the souls of the wounded."

I was taken with MacNeil's prose from the first page of the prologue. "In spring, when the dandelions were young and saucy, the children had plucked them by the handfuls. Fed them to the brook just to watch them drown. Adults had snapped off their golden round heads and green leaves and spoken openly of the liquid pleasures brewing in their barns. Farmers had sliced away the weeds with a vengeance, leaving their slaughtered bodies to the wind for burial." (7)

A must read! ( )

very good....touching, poignant, a different view of WWII ( )