Ghost Horse, The

I have always known that there were great stories at the race track, but as a casual observer I couldn't really find them. They were buried under a culture and language that I didn't understand. So here comes Joe Layden, and he is more than fluent in the language of the track. He not only has found a dandy story, he translates it for the rest of us and makes it sing. This is terrific stuff.

--Leigh Montville, New York Times bestselling author of At the Altar of Speed , Ted Williams and The Big Bam

This is more than a lovely tale about how a hard luck horseman came to embrace New Age mysticism--it's a rollicking read about how magic and the mystifying thrive at the racetrack.

--Joe Drape, author of the New York Times bestseller Our Boys

I have always known that there were great stories at the race track, but as a casual observer I couldn't really find them. They were buried under a culture and language that I didn't understand. So here comes Joe Layden, and he is more than fluent in the language of the track. He not only has found a dandy story, he translates it for the rest of us and makes it sing. This is terrific stuff.

--Leigh Montville, New York Times bestselling author of At the Altar of Speed , Ted Williams and The Big Bam

I'll make you a little wager: Joe Layden's The Ghost Horse will go down as one of the most irresistible horseracing books ever written. It is a narrative that is by turns wrenchingly sad and staggeringly sweet, all of them skillfully negotiated by Layden, who takes us into the backstretch world with the firm hand and unerring feel of a master jockey.

--Wayne Coffey, author of the New York Times bestseller The Boys of Winter and co-author (with R.A. Dickey) of the bestseller Wherever I Wind Up: My Search for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball

This is more than a lovely tale about how a hard luck horseman came to embrace New Age mysticism--it's a rollicking read about how magic and the mystifying thrive at the racetrack.

--Joe Drape, author of the New York Times bestseller Our Boys

I have always known that there were great stories at the race track, but as a casual observer I couldn't really find them. They were buried under a culture and language that I didn't understand. So here comes Joe Layden, and he is more than fluent in the language of the track. He not only has found a dandy story, he translates it for the rest of us and makes it sing. This is terrific stuff.

--Leigh Montville, New York Times bestselling author of At the Altar of Speed , Ted Williams and The Big Bam

The Ghost Horse is a heart-warming tale, artfully told, that has all the ingredients of a racing saga--one that braids together, in a single bittersweet drama, the connecting threads of love and loneliness, grief and goodness, and death and despair, with moments of high triumph woven throughout. It is the story of a hard-bitten horseman who lost his wife but found the horse, a beautiful if off-bred filly, who helped carry him out of his place of mourning. Along the way, author Joe Layden vividly portrays life in the lowly bush leagues of American racing, with its hopes and dreams and struggles for survival. He has penned an easy winner here.

--William Nack, author of Secretariat and Ruffian: A Racetrack Romance

I'll make you a little wager: Joe Layden's The Ghost Horse will go down as one of the most irresistible horseracing books ever written. It is a narrative that is by turns wrenchingly sad and staggeringly sweet, all of them skillfully negotiated by Layden, who takes us into the backstretch world with the firm hand and unerring feel of a master jockey.

--Wayne Coffey, author of the New York Times bestseller The Boys of Winter and co-author (with R.A. Dickey) of the bestseller Wherever I Wind Up: My Search for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball

This is more than a lovely tale about how a hard luck horseman came to embrace New Age mysticism--it's a rollicking read about how magic and the mystifying thrive at the racetrack.

--Joe Drape, author of the New York Times bestseller Our Boys

I have always known that there were great stories at the race track, but as a casual observer I couldn't really find them. They were buried under a culture and language that I didn't understand. So here comes Joe Layden, and he is more than fluent in the language of the track. He not only has found a dandy story, he translates it for the rest of us and makes it sing. This is terrific stuff.

--Leigh Montville, New

JOE LAYDEN is a multiple New York Times bestselling author and an award-winning journalist whose work has been honored by the New York Newspaper Publishers Association, the National Associated Press Sports Editors, the New York State Associated Press Association, and the International Reading Association/Children's Book Council. Mr. Layden has written or co-written more than thirty books for adults and children, including The Last Great Fight.