A Horse for Joe (The Joe MacGregor series)

A Horse for Joe is not a children’s book, although it may be enjoyable for children as well as those of all ages.
Once A Suit for Melvin was published in 2022, readers, many of them adult men, asked, “What happens next? There needs to be another book.”

The author’s reply was, “I cannot not send J.J (later Joe) and Melvin to Vietnam.” As 1962 high
school graduates, their generation, like others, was among those sent to a country they had never heard of, according to a late veteran classmate, “to do things they had been told their whole life were wrong.”

In A Horse for Joe the lead character is becoming part of a new family. He has some rough edges to deal with, but he's guided by love. Through the character of his adopted father, Dr. Knox Alastair MacGregor, the reader gets a glimpse of what is coming for the U.S. in Vietnam while Joe watches the news with innocence.

A Suit for Melvin and A Horse for Joe take Joe from a boy, fishing in Small Town, Mo., through his freshman year of high school where he faces basketball as the shortest boy in tryouts, the adoration of a girl who’s labeled him for love before he’s ready, the hatred of a man who wants to kill him, a new family, and a horse named Lennox.

Says Dr. MacGregor, “Joe’s had a lot of experiences but nothing that prepares him for a battlefield.”

In the mind of the author, Dr. MacGregor speaks to Joe in the voice of the same gentle wisdom Gregory Peck uses in Old Yeller and The Yearling in explaining life to his newly-adopted son. Like all of Jo E. Jennings' books, there are difficult emotions to cope with, always integrated or followed with humor. Sometimes the doctor may even be somewhat corny.

A Suit for Melvin left J.J. (Joe) heading toward a foster home and eighth grade. A Horse for Joe picks up when Joe is 14, going into high school. It ends when Joe is almost 16. At least two more Joe books are planned as he lives, as all human begins do, with a future he cannot imagine.

This book is dedicated to my high school schoolmates and college peers who took part in the Vietnam war. It is dedicated to all veterans of all wars, living or dead, whether they served because they were passionate about their cause or because they were drafted into a situation they did not feel in their heart.

This book is not about war. It has to do with soldiers having started out as innocent children. Behind the face of every hero is a being who was once a child.