If Wishes Were Horses

By W. P. Kinsella

From the author of Shoeless Joe, the book that inspired the movie Field of Dreams.

In the tradition of his bestselling Shoeless Joe, W.P. Kinsella has created another literary baseball classic. A warm tale of magic, humor and the power of a second chance, its hero is Joe McCoy, an unemployed newspaper writer who by some bizarre circumstances is now a fugitive from the FBI. There's only one thing left for Joe to do – go home to Iowa and tell his story to the only two men who just might believe it – Shoeless Joe's Ray Kinsella and The Iowa Baseball Confederacy's Gideon Clarke. This pair, Joe has heard, know a thing or two about inexplicable events.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Jul 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9780007497560

W. P. Kinsella

William Patrick Kinsella, OC, OBC (born May 25, 1935) is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. His work has often concerned baseball, First Nations people, and other Canadian issues.

Reviews for If Wishes Were Horses

[jspurdy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book started out with promise, but I found it tedious before the end. The central character, Kid McCoy has been living in a parallel universe since refusing to pitch on three days rest in the state championship some 15 years earlier. In one universe, he went on to become a major league pitcher with limited talent, ultimately to a job as a journalist. In the other universe, he married his high school sweetheart who he always loved, and raised a family in Iowa. Ray Kinsella and Gideon Clarke, the central characters in Shoeless Joe and the Iowa Baseball Confederacy, play roles in helping McCoy sort out his dilemma early in the book, but are out of the story halfway through.