Blind Your Ponies, Stanley Gordon West

Blind Your Ponies,  Stanley Gordon West

This has to be my favorite book of the year.  Thanks to a gift from Brad Webb, I had the pleasure of a wonderful story set in Willow Creek, MT that captures the mood, tragedies, and expectations that are part of rural life.  Here is a set of characters that could move in to our little town of Willow River and fit right in.  The author, a Minnesotan who has forced his literary talents into the market place in spite of all odds, has really captured the language, the voices, and the foibles that give the story life.

The title comes from an Indian legend, they do not kill any ponies in the book.  Rather, the book is the convergence of a group of boys who become the town basketball team.  This is a team that lost 96 straight coming in the year, and they suddenly focus the hope of the entire community.  How many times have I heard that if they close the school we will lose our team and our town will lose its identity?

Small town teams carry the soul of the community on their shoulders when the play and in this case they become the focal point for numerous stories to converge and be shared as the town people reach out to each other to form a support for the team, not realizing that the team is supporting them, until the end.

It is a book with good pacing, fun sub-stories, and mostly happy endings.  What more can you ask for?

BLIND YOUR PONIES

Stanley Gordon West

Paperback
Algonquin Books
ISBN: 9781565129849

About the Book

Hope is hard to come by in the hard-luck town of Willow Creek. Sam Pickett and five young men are about to change that.

Sam Pickett never expected to settle in this dried-up shell of a town on the western edge of the world. He's come here to hide from the violence and madness that have shattered his life, but what he finds is what he least expects. There's a spirit that endures in Willow Cree, Montana. It seems that every inhabitant of this forgotten outpost has a story, a reason for taking a detour to this place --- or a reason for staying.

As the coach of the hapless high school basketball team (zero wins, 93 losses), Sam can't help but be moved by the bravery he witnesses in the everyday lives of people --- including his own young players --- bearing their sorrows and broken dreams. How do they carry on, believing in a future that seems to be based on the flimsiest of promises? Drawing on the strength of the boys on the team, sharing the hope they display despite insurmountable odds, Sam finally begins to see a future worth living.

Author Stanley Gordon West has filled the town of Willow Creek with characters so vividly cast that they become real as relatives, and their stories --- so full of humor and passion, loss and determination --- illuminate a path into the human heart.  http://www.bookreporter.com/features/holiday_cheer_2010/blind_your_ponies.asp

The Author
Stanley Gordon West

Stanley Gordon West was born in 1932 and attended St. Paul Central High School in Minnesota. He lived in Bozeman, Montana for several years, and now resides in Shakopee, MN. All of his novels are popular book club selections: Blind Your Ponies, two other novels set in the same time and place as Until They Bring the Streetcars Back - Finding Laura Buggs and Growing an Inch - and his most recent, Sweet, Shattered Dreams. His novel Amos was made into a CBS Movie of the Week starring Kirk Douglas that stirred national controversy over abuse of the aged in America. When Kirk Douglas testified before Congress and wrote in the New York Times on the issue, he pointed out that animals had been protected by law for one hundred years before children or the aged. While Amos focused on elder abuse, Until They Bring the Streetcars Back explores the other vulnerable end of the age spectrum.

http://edinareads.org/streetcars/author.htm