If Wishes Were Horses

An entertaining romp about love, loss, crime, and baseball, from the bestselling author of Shoeless Joe.

Washed-up pitcher Joe McCoy, in a strange twist of fate, has wound up as a fugitive running from the FBI. Without many other options, Joe goes home to Iowa to try to seek out the only two men who just might be able to help him—Ray Kinsella and Gideon Clarke…

“Continuing his series of bestselling baseball sagas…W.P. Kinsella brings nomadic pitcher Joe McCoy to the role of protagonist. Romping from bed to bed, he flops through a career of eight wins and 23 losses, tries journalism without much success, kidnaps a diplomat’s baby, helps stick up a burger joint, and comes to terms with his life as his teenage sweetheart lies dying in hospital…a good read…What makes the book complex and more than just a comedy is time shifting as Kinsella goes from present to past and on to dreams of what might have been. The technique gives the story depth, brings motivation into view, and reveals McCoy’s character to be that of a man in fear of the world. Thus the struggle to break rules, his contempt for cleanliness, the law, and accountants.”—Quill & Quire