Book 18 (2014)

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1. Berger, John - Ways of Seeing (149 pages)
2. Vonnegut, Kurt - God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (72 pages)
3. Roth, Joseph - The Legend of the Holy Drinker (100 pages)
4. Hrabal, Bohumil - Closely Observed Trains (87 pages)
5. Bloomfield, Barbara & Chris Radley - Couple Therapy: Dramas of Love and Sex (171 pages)
6. Feist, Raymond E. - Magician (689 pages)
7. Feist, Raymond E. - Silverthorn (424 pages)
8. Faber, Michael - Under the Skin (296 pages)
9. Gourevitch, Philip - We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda (351 pages)
10. Feist, Raymond E. - A Darkness at Sethanon (518 pages)
11. Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front (215 pages)
12. Jones, Gwyneth - White Queen (318 pages)
13. Strunk, William, Jr., and E. B. White - The Elements of Style (104 pages)
14. Keating, Karl - Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on "Romanism" by "Bible Christians" (337 pages)
15. Ettlinger, Steve - Twinkie, Deconstructed (274 pages)
16. Dick, Philip K. - The Penultimate Truth (191 pages)
17. Clason, George S. - The Richest Man in Babylon (198 pages)
18. McCoy, Horace - They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (119 pages)

Page count4613

The prisoner will stand…

I stood up. For a moment I saw Gloria again, sitting on that bench on the pier. The bullet had just struck her in the side of the head; the blood had not even started to flow. The flash from the pistol still lighted her face. Everything was as plain as day. She was completely relaxed, was completely comfortable. The impact of the bullet had turned her head a little away from me; I did not have a perfect profile view but could see enough of her face and her lips to know she was smiling. The Prosecuting Attorney was wrong when he told the jury she died in agony, friendless, alone except for her brutal murderer, out there in that black night on the edge of the Pacific. He was as wrong as a man can be. She did not die in agony. She was relaxed and comfortable and she was smiling. It was the first time I had ever seen her smile. How could she have been in agony then? And she wasn't friendless.

I was her very best friend. I was her only friend. So how could she have been friendless?

Whew! That was Chapter One of They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, a powerful story of Depression-era America. The story takes places in the span of one moment, as the sentence for murder is being read in court; or over the span of several weeks leading up to the aforementioned death.

Robert and Gloria have come to Hollywood with the dream of finding redemption through the movies. They meet outside Paramount Studios, having just failed to land roles as extras, and agree to take part in a dance marathon. As long as they can stay alive in the competition, they will get free food and a free bed. Over the course of the next several weeks, we learn what makes the two of them tick, what leads to Robert shooting Gloria, and we are faced with the question: Was it a brutal murder, as the Prosecutor asserts, or was it an act of love and friendship? Will "God [or the reader] have mercy on [his] soul"?

Through this dance marathon, McCoy treats us to a sample of what life was like during the Depression. It's a story of broken people with shattered dreams doing what they can to survive and having the humanity sucked out of them. Gritty, powerful stuff!