[Rec] Drew Hayden Taylor - Chasing Painted Horses

[yuuago]

Chasing Painted Horses by Drew Hayden Taylor came out in September. My library received it a couple of weeks ago.

It has everything I like about his writing. There's something about his characters, and the way he slips little bits of magic into the world, that is really nice. And his style slips little bits of humour into it along the way - even in this book, which has a much more serious atmosphere than Motorcycles and Sweetgrass.

And he's really good at writing kids. Like, his books aren't for kids, but the ones I've read tend to have a large part from kid POV, and he's really good at getting at that certain something that makes a vivid and realistic kid voice. At least, I think so.

I'm too tired right now to make this a good and articulate rec, so I'll just finish by saying that I liked this book very much, and I like this guy's writing in general. I wish I could draw, so I could do fanart of scenes from his books.

Here's the summary from the bookflap for those who want more details on what it's about:

When Ralph Thomas comes across graffiti of a horse in an alleyway in the early hours of the morning, he is stopped in his tracks. He recognizes this horse. A half-asleep Indigenous homeless man sees Ralph's reaction to the horse and calls out to him. Over the course of a morning's worth of hot coffee on a bitterly cold day, Ralph and the homeless man talk and Ralph remembers a troubling moment from his childhood when an odd little girl, Danielle, drew the most beautiful and intriguing horse on his mother's Everything Wall, winning the competition set up for children on the Otter Lake Reserve.

Ralph as lived with many questions that arose from his eleventh winter. What did the horse mean - to him, his sister, his best friend, and, most importantly, the girl who drew it? These questions never left him.