Ghost Horse (McNeely)

Book Reviews
A Texas boy grapples with his parents’ estrangement in McNeely’s debut novel.... McNeely beautifully portrays the confusion of a boy doing his best to deal with matters that are beyond his understanding but fully capable of doing him harm.... A dark, deeply stirring novel about the quiet tragedy of growing up in a broken family.
Kirkus Reviews


[A] haunting debut novel, which never allows its pop culture references or beautifully rendered sentences to soften the violence that life—his parents’ disintegrating marriage, his classmates’ cruelty, his grandmother’s vindictiveness—visits upon its sensitive protagonist.
Jeff Salamon - Texas Monthly


[A] wonderful under-the-radar book....The writing is sensitive, beautiful, and ominous...as if Cormac McCarthy and Denis Johnson teamed up to write a 1970s Texas YA novel that went off the rails somewhere—in a very, very good way.
Lisa Peet - Library Journal


McNeely explores the heartbreak and confusion of adolescence through the eyes of an 11 year old boy .... It's a shattering portrait, not only of the ways that divorce can unhinge a boy's life, but also in the ways that wayward adults can corrupt childhood innocence.
Charles Ealey - Austin-American Statesman


Ghost Horse by Thomas McNeely is a powerful debut novel; it is both a deeply moving coming-of-age story and an intense psychological portrait of a family in crisis. McNeely weaves an intricate web of a plot against the backdrop of the racial and class tensions of Houston of the 1970s, and explores themes of love, lost innocence, loyalty, and broken families. The tale of eleven-year-old Buddy over one unsettling year of his adolescence makes for a compelling and worthwhile read.
Leila Rice - Reader's Oasis


[A] story that will stay with you. A story of racism, and class tension. A story of broken families and lost innocence. McNeely takes you back in time to when you were eleven. As you read, you see everything as Buddy sees it, and understand it (or don’t understand it) as Buddy does. You see the edges of dark, adult truths through the unknowing, innocent eyes of a child. Over time, however, Buddy starts to pick things up. Not everything, but enough to know when something’s wrong.... A dark, beautiful, heartbreaking story, I found myself wanting to both quote everything and turn away in unease. McNeely weaves a tale you won’t soon forget.
Elizabeth O'Brien - Fueled by Fiction


Houston native Thomas H. McNeely explores the heartbreak and confusion of adolescence through the eyes of an 11-year-old boy..... It’s a shattering portrait, not only in the ways that divorce can unhinge a boy’s life, but also in the ways that wayward adults can corrupt childhood innocence.
Charles Ealey - Austin-American Statesman


McNeely writes with eerie precision the feelings of a child .... If you believe that a book should push you off balance and take you somewhere new, then Ghost Horse will deliver.
Ada Fetters - Commonline Journal