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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
216 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
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59 people want to read
About the author
W.P. Kinsella
56 books233 followersWilliam Patrick Kinsella, OC, OBC was a Canadian novelist and short story writer. His work has often concerned baseball and Canada's First Nations and other Canadian issues.
William Patrick Kinsella was born to John Matthew Kinsella and Olive Kinsella in Edmonton, Alberta. Kinsella was raised until he was 10 years-old at a homestead near Darwell, Alberta, 60 km west of the city, home-schooled by his mother and taking correspondence courses. "I'm one of these people who woke up at age five knowing how to read and write," he says. When he was ten, the family moved to Edmonton.
As an adult, he held a variety of jobs in Edmonton, including as a clerk for the Government of Alberta and managing a credit bureau. In 1967, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia, running a pizza restaurant called Caesar's Italian Village and driving a taxi.
Though he had been writing since he was a child (winning a YMCA contest at age 14), he began taking writing courses at the University of Victoria in 1970, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing there in 1974. He travelled down to Iowa and earned a Master of Fine Arts in English degree through the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1978. In 1991, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from the University of Victoria.
Kinsella's most famous work is Shoeless Joe, upon which the movie Field of Dreams was based. A short story by Kinsella, Lieberman in Love, was the basis for a short film that won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film – the Oscar win came as a surprise to the author, who, watching the award telecast from home, had no idea the film had been made and released. He had not been listed in the film's credits, and was not acknowledged by director Christine Lahti in her acceptance speech – a full-page advertisement was later placed in Variety apologizing to Kinsella for the error. Kinsella's eight books of short stories about life on a First Nations reserve were the basis for the movie Dance Me Outside and CBC television series The Rez, both of which Kinsella considers very poor quality. The collection Fencepost Chronicles won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1987.
Before becoming a professional author, he was a professor of English at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Kinsella suffered a car accident in 1997 which resulted in a long hiatus in his fiction-writing career until the publication of the novel, Butterfly Winter. He is a noted tournament Scrabble player, becoming more involved with the game after being disillusioned by the 1994 Major League Baseball strike. Near the end of his life he lived in Yale, British Columbia with his fourth wife, Barbara (d. 2012), and occasionally wrote articles for various newspapers.
In the year 1993, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of British Columbia.
W.P. Kinsella elected to die on September 16, 2016 with the assistance of a physician.
William Patrick Kinsella was born to John Matthew Kinsella and Olive Kinsella in Edmonton, Alberta. Kinsella was raised until he was 10 years-old at a homestead near Darwell, Alberta, 60 km west of the city, home-schooled by his mother and taking correspondence courses. "I'm one of these people who woke up at age five knowing how to read and write," he says. When he was ten, the family moved to Edmonton.
As an adult, he held a variety of jobs in Edmonton, including as a clerk for the Government of Alberta and managing a credit bureau. In 1967, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia, running a pizza restaurant called Caesar's Italian Village and driving a taxi.
Though he had been writing since he was a child (winning a YMCA contest at age 14), he began taking writing courses at the University of Victoria in 1970, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing there in 1974. He travelled down to Iowa and earned a Master of Fine Arts in English degree through the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1978. In 1991, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from the University of Victoria.
Kinsella's most famous work is Shoeless Joe, upon which the movie Field of Dreams was based. A short story by Kinsella, Lieberman in Love, was the basis for a short film that won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film – the Oscar win came as a surprise to the author, who, watching the award telecast from home, had no idea the film had been made and released. He had not been listed in the film's credits, and was not acknowledged by director Christine Lahti in her acceptance speech – a full-page advertisement was later placed in Variety apologizing to Kinsella for the error. Kinsella's eight books of short stories about life on a First Nations reserve were the basis for the movie Dance Me Outside and CBC television series The Rez, both of which Kinsella considers very poor quality. The collection Fencepost Chronicles won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1987.
Before becoming a professional author, he was a professor of English at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Kinsella suffered a car accident in 1997 which resulted in a long hiatus in his fiction-writing career until the publication of the novel, Butterfly Winter. He is a noted tournament Scrabble player, becoming more involved with the game after being disillusioned by the 1994 Major League Baseball strike. Near the end of his life he lived in Yale, British Columbia with his fourth wife, Barbara (d. 2012), and occasionally wrote articles for various newspapers.
In the year 1993, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of British Columbia.
W.P. Kinsella elected to die on September 16, 2016 with the assistance of a physician.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 4, 2025
I really try to like this author because of “Field of Dreams.” This book was another swing and a miss (pun intended).
January 27, 2023
I have no idea what I just listened to. Maybe my problem is that I listened to it as an audiobook and didn't pay close attention. Maybe my problem is that I don't do multiple dimension storylines well. Maybe my problem is that this book is confusing as hell. I really have no idea.
They talked about computers but also made it sound like the characters were set way before computers. They referenced things from the early 1900s (even away from the Field of Dreams) but talked about riding on planes. Admittedly, this confusion may have been solved by reading the physical book but here we are and I highly doubt I'll ever read the physical book. There were also some problematic things said throughout the book that made me think it was set way earlier than it apparently was (and also made me think it was written way earlier than it was) so hence the one star.
I love baseball books, I loved the Field of Dreams movie and enjoyed the book that was based off of. But this book? Nah. Especially since it's supposed to be a "love affair with baseball" type of book and I got the opposite vibe while listening to it. It sounded more like baseball ruined lives in this case so I couldn't really get behind that description.
They talked about computers but also made it sound like the characters were set way before computers. They referenced things from the early 1900s (even away from the Field of Dreams) but talked about riding on planes. Admittedly, this confusion may have been solved by reading the physical book but here we are and I highly doubt I'll ever read the physical book. There were also some problematic things said throughout the book that made me think it was set way earlier than it apparently was (and also made me think it was written way earlier than it was) so hence the one star.
I love baseball books, I loved the Field of Dreams movie and enjoyed the book that was based off of. But this book? Nah. Especially since it's supposed to be a "love affair with baseball" type of book and I got the opposite vibe while listening to it. It sounded more like baseball ruined lives in this case so I couldn't really get behind that description.
April 17, 2020
This book is vintage Kinsella, down to earth characters touched by a kind of magic. And focused on baseball. Ray Kinsella is back revisiting from Shoeless Joe. The setting is the past/present and Joe McCoy is trying to find out what life he has lived - the one where he stayed home , married his love, Maureen, and worked for the local press or the one where he had a very short baseball pitching career and then spent years chasing that illusive success.
Kinsella must be experienced and while this book is not as compelling for me as Shoeless Joe, I savoured the writing and enjoyed getting to know the characters.
Kinsella must be experienced and while this book is not as compelling for me as Shoeless Joe, I savoured the writing and enjoyed getting to know the characters.
December 9, 2022
I say this book and the art on the front gave me a thought it was about baseball and it tricked me. Now don’t get me wrong they talk about baseball because he was a baseball player but it is not what I expected. Living two lives maybe, fantasy maybe.
I got confused throughout the book trying to keep up with the two storylines going back and forth. It was Interesting for sure but not the biggest fan of this type of story.
Field of dreams with a twist and a really big twist.
I got confused throughout the book trying to keep up with the two storylines going back and forth. It was Interesting for sure but not the biggest fan of this type of story.
Field of dreams with a twist and a really big twist.
April 30, 2018
If Wishes Were Horses.
Interesting book. Lots of stories in here. Didn't think it would end the way that it did. Just wish that there was more baseball stories in it.
Interesting book. Lots of stories in here. Didn't think it would end the way that it did. Just wish that there was more baseball stories in it.
February 2, 2021
I enjoyed the author's Field of Dreams and Shoeless Joe stories, but this one seemed silly and paled in comparison to the other tales.
June 11, 2022
One of the weirdest stories I've read in a long time but it was compelling and I loved it.
September 16, 2008
Plot Summary
The story starts off with a character called ray Kinsella. He receives a call from a man, Joe McCoy, who is on the FBI's most wanted list. He says that he wants to meet with Ray at a drug store. The story then goes from the perspective of a man named Gideon Clarke who lives with a woman who has Down syndrome. He also receives a call from Joe and he wants to meet with him as well. When they all meet up together, it goes from the perspective of Joe and he explains his life and how he ended up being a wanted criminal. Both Ray and Gideon don’t know why Joe is telling them this but they listen anyway. Joe McCoy was a baseball player throughout high school and eventually went to the big leagues only to have a terrible record playing for professional teams. He eventually quits and becomes a journalist for the magazines. Throughout his story he keeps telling the men that he has dreams about his girlfriend Maureen back in high school and how they could have been together if he would have stayed with her instead of baseball. Joe then tells about how he found a UFO when he was a journalist but no one believed him and the teenagers that found it. He then tells them about how he got married and met up with his wife’s brother Adam and his fiancée Francie. He begins to have feelings for Francie but she has to leave back to Boston. A woman then randomly gives Francie a baby because she thought that Joe and Francie were together. Joe’s only choice is to go with Francie back to Boston. They find out that the baby belongs to the Courteguayan ambassador to the United States. They realize that they are on the run and travel around the States to avoid the police. Joe keeps telling the men about his dreams about Maureen and that they and a kid together. Joe decides to go back and see Maureen after all these years because he always loved her. He ends up stealing from a McDonalds to get money for the trip to Maureen’s and when he finds her house, he finds out that she has cancer. Joe continues to tell the men about he dreams about his baseball career and finally at the end of the book, he is in a hospital room with Maureen and he feels that his dreams have been released from he mind and he is free.
Personal Response
I don’t know if I can say that I really enjoyed the book because it jumped back and forth between Joe’s dreams and real life and his story that he was telling the men. I didn’t like this style of writing and it was confusing at times. It didn’t have a flow to the story and it was random at times. I also didn’t like the ending because it didn’t explain why he was talking to the two men. I didn’t get why he wanted to meet with them and why he needed them to help him. The story about Joe’s escape from the law was good but when it changed around it just didn’t work. The story didn’t really seem believable but the characters themselves seemed like they could be real people. I didn’t really learn anything from the book because it was hard to understand what the author was trying to say. Overall, the book was okay but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Quotes
In this quote Joe says that the UFO had a better introduction to earth by seeing the teenagers together. “A much better introduction to Earth than being met by a dozen armored tanks and a trigger-happy SWAT team.”
In this quote Joe’s friend is pretending to be a cop as Joe steals from the McDonalds. “Freeze Slimeball! Drop the loot! Hands over your head!”
In this quote a man in one of Joe’s dreams of them being hijacked hopes that Joe isn’t apart of it. “No offense. I was just hopin’ y’all hadn’t turned to a life of crime. You sure never could pitch a baseball.”
In this quote Joe McCoy explains his loneliness in being a fugitive by using an ad. “Being a fugitive is very lonely business. There is no support group. Feeling neglected? Tired of eating in bad restaurants, sleeping days, driving nights? Miss your family and friends, going outdoors without sunglasses? Then call 1-800-FUGITIVE.”
In this quote one of Joe’s friends, Blind John, talks about how he umps games sometimes. “I still call intersquad games in spring training. I love it when a rookie turns around and says, ‘Whassamatter, ump, you blind or somthin’?”
In this quote Ray is telling Joe that his dreams are mysterys and they can't be solved. "Mystery is mystery, best left alone."
The story starts off with a character called ray Kinsella. He receives a call from a man, Joe McCoy, who is on the FBI's most wanted list. He says that he wants to meet with Ray at a drug store. The story then goes from the perspective of a man named Gideon Clarke who lives with a woman who has Down syndrome. He also receives a call from Joe and he wants to meet with him as well. When they all meet up together, it goes from the perspective of Joe and he explains his life and how he ended up being a wanted criminal. Both Ray and Gideon don’t know why Joe is telling them this but they listen anyway. Joe McCoy was a baseball player throughout high school and eventually went to the big leagues only to have a terrible record playing for professional teams. He eventually quits and becomes a journalist for the magazines. Throughout his story he keeps telling the men that he has dreams about his girlfriend Maureen back in high school and how they could have been together if he would have stayed with her instead of baseball. Joe then tells about how he found a UFO when he was a journalist but no one believed him and the teenagers that found it. He then tells them about how he got married and met up with his wife’s brother Adam and his fiancée Francie. He begins to have feelings for Francie but she has to leave back to Boston. A woman then randomly gives Francie a baby because she thought that Joe and Francie were together. Joe’s only choice is to go with Francie back to Boston. They find out that the baby belongs to the Courteguayan ambassador to the United States. They realize that they are on the run and travel around the States to avoid the police. Joe keeps telling the men about his dreams about Maureen and that they and a kid together. Joe decides to go back and see Maureen after all these years because he always loved her. He ends up stealing from a McDonalds to get money for the trip to Maureen’s and when he finds her house, he finds out that she has cancer. Joe continues to tell the men about he dreams about his baseball career and finally at the end of the book, he is in a hospital room with Maureen and he feels that his dreams have been released from he mind and he is free.
Personal Response
I don’t know if I can say that I really enjoyed the book because it jumped back and forth between Joe’s dreams and real life and his story that he was telling the men. I didn’t like this style of writing and it was confusing at times. It didn’t have a flow to the story and it was random at times. I also didn’t like the ending because it didn’t explain why he was talking to the two men. I didn’t get why he wanted to meet with them and why he needed them to help him. The story about Joe’s escape from the law was good but when it changed around it just didn’t work. The story didn’t really seem believable but the characters themselves seemed like they could be real people. I didn’t really learn anything from the book because it was hard to understand what the author was trying to say. Overall, the book was okay but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Quotes
In this quote Joe says that the UFO had a better introduction to earth by seeing the teenagers together. “A much better introduction to Earth than being met by a dozen armored tanks and a trigger-happy SWAT team.”
In this quote Joe’s friend is pretending to be a cop as Joe steals from the McDonalds. “Freeze Slimeball! Drop the loot! Hands over your head!”
In this quote a man in one of Joe’s dreams of them being hijacked hopes that Joe isn’t apart of it. “No offense. I was just hopin’ y’all hadn’t turned to a life of crime. You sure never could pitch a baseball.”
In this quote Joe McCoy explains his loneliness in being a fugitive by using an ad. “Being a fugitive is very lonely business. There is no support group. Feeling neglected? Tired of eating in bad restaurants, sleeping days, driving nights? Miss your family and friends, going outdoors without sunglasses? Then call 1-800-FUGITIVE.”
In this quote one of Joe’s friends, Blind John, talks about how he umps games sometimes. “I still call intersquad games in spring training. I love it when a rookie turns around and says, ‘Whassamatter, ump, you blind or somthin’?”
In this quote Ray is telling Joe that his dreams are mysterys and they can't be solved. "Mystery is mystery, best left alone."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 27, 2013
Good, compelling--if slightly disturbing--read. Fits into the Iowa Baseball Universe, but is a distant third behind Shoeless Joe and Iowa Baseball Confederacy. Still, was a welcome change from the real world and offers some hope that bad decisions might be undone. Can't wait to get my hands on Butterfly Winter.
April 14, 2014
Every time I finish a W.P. Kinsella book I am always left asking my self what the hell just happen! But whatever just happen I enjoyed it! One day I am going to set down and read all W.P. Kinsella's books in order and try and put the whole story together!! If there is one!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews