Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Nov 2022
320 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
Erika T. Wurth's White Horse is a gritty, vibrant debut novel about an Indigenous woman who must face her past when she discovers a bracelet haunted by her mother's spirit.
Some people are haunted in more ways than one…
Kari James, Urban Native, is a fan of heavy metal, ripped jeans, Stephen King novels, and dive bars. She spends most of her time at her favorite spot in Denver, a bar called White Horse. There, she tries her best to ignore her past and the questions surrounding her mother who abandoned her when she was just two years old.
But soon after her cousin Debby brings her a traditional bracelet that once belonged to Kari's mother, Kari starts seeing disturbing visions of her mother and a mysterious creature. When the visions refuse to go away, Kari must uncover what really happened to her mother all those years ago. Her father, permanently disabled from a car crash, can't help her. Her Auntie Squeaker seems to know something but isn't eager to give it all up at once. Debby's anxious to help, but her controlling husband keeps getting in the way.
Kari's journey toward a truth long denied by both her family and law enforcement forces her to confront her dysfunctional relationships, thoughts about a friend she lost in childhood, and her desire for the one thing she's always wanted but could never have…
"Fans of supernatural thrillers and classic Stephen King will devour this tale of ghosts, heavy metal, and an urban Indigenous woman reckoning with the tragedies of the past from Wurth...decadently blunt prose makes it easy to smell the smoke in the air and hear the heavy metal lyrics about memory and identity. This fresh take on the ghost story is sure to wow." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"With tangible characters, insightful dialogue, and the horror and painful beauty of discovering one's truth, Wurth's debut is must-read horror with a big, bleeding heart." - Library Journal (starred review)
"An engrossing modern horror story that blends the power of Indigenous spiritualism with earthly terrors." - Kirkus Reviews
"Gritty, haunting, understated, and beautiful." - CrimeReads
"Wurth... draws on her own upbringing to bring a raw realism to her depictions of urban Indigenous life in the West." - Seattle Times
"It's metal to the end, it's Denver to the core, it's Native without trying, there's ghosts, there's blood, there's roller coasters, and there's about a thousand cigarettes smoked. What else can you ask for in a novel?" - Stephen Graham Jones, author of The Only Good Indians
"This ghost story is a perfect example of new wave horror that will also satisfy fans of classic Stephen King." - Silvia Moreno-Garcia, author of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and Mexican Gothic
This information about White Horse was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Erika T. Wurth's work has appeared in numerous journals including Buzzfeed and The Kenyon Review. White Horse is her debut novel. She is a Kenyon Review Writers Workshop Scholar, attended the Tin House Summer Workshop, and is a narrative artist for the Meow Wolf Denver installation. She is of Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee descent.
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