Product Description

In the white-shingled houses of Beinn Barra, young men shine their shoes and young girls curl their hair. It’s Saturday night, there’s a dance in the parish hall, and Benny Doucet is playing. They come from all over Cape Breton to hear “Strings” Doucet play the fiddle. But it is 1939. England has declared war on Germany. Canada will march beside the mother country. Three friends enlist in the legendary Cape Breton Highlanders: fisherman Hector MacDonald, gifted musician Benny Doucet, and Calum MacPherson, who has been accepted at Dalhousie to study medicine. The three friends sail off to war in November 1941. The families wait for word of their boys. Gunner MacDonald, a returned man himself, knows only too well what his fisherman son will witness in the trenches of Europe. Joachim and Ona MacPherson seek, and fail to find, solace in each other. Napoleon and Flora Doucet finger their rosary beads at the kitchen table and pray for Benny’s safety. Where White Horses Gallop is a haunting tale of a war where emotional shrapnel riddles the spirit long after the guns a continent away have grown silent.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #193982 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

A Must Read for All Canadians
Where White Horses Gallop is a beautiful book. Set in Cape Breton, near the beginning of World War II, the reader is introduced to a small community of characters. Three young men go off to fight in Europe while one remains home fighting his own war. MacNeil's ability to make you see the community and feel their happiness and their pain is profound. The sense of loss of one community to the ravages of war, both through losses on the fields of battle and losses after the war, are indicative of losses felt throughout our country during this time. I was moved by the language, the beauty of small things and the tremendous sacrifice made by so many. This book tells a lesson through these lives that we all know. And we all know we should never forget. Reading this wonderful work of fiction made it all real to me again. Beatrice MacNeil is a wonderful new Canadian author! I encourage everyone to read this book!

Gothic jewel from Cape Breton rips open the heart.
This book lingers like a war painting from a sentimental old master, still seeing the lilly beside a rotting corpse, the beautiful curve in a woman's mouth as she is paraded down a street covered in tar and feathers.... and still accepting the humanity of the insane.

I couldn't put it down and when I did, I dreamed about it.