Book Beginnings - Coal Black Horse

Book Beginnings is a meme hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the first sentence (or so) of a book you are currently reading, along with your initial thoughts and impressions about the sentence or book. Remember to include the title of the book and the author AND link up at the Rose City Reader

The evening of Sunday May 10 in the year 1863, Hettie Childs called her son, Robey, to the house from the old fields where he walked the high meadow along the fence lines where the cattle grazed, licking shoots of new spring grass that grew in the mowing on the edge of the pasture. He walked a shambling gait, his knees to and fro and his shoulders rocking. His hands were already a man's hands, cut square, with tapering fingers, and his hair hung loose to his shoulders. He was a boy whose mature body would be taller yet and of late he'd been experiencing frightening spurts of growth. On one night alone he grew an entire inch and when morning came he felt stretched and his body ached and he cried out when he sat up.

Okay, so I included a little more than usual of the beginning, but only because this book is so good! Please do not write this off as an 'animal' book. It's not about a horse. I repeat: it is not about a horse.

I know animal books or even books with animals in the title can turn off many readers. I read this for the color-coded reading challenge and it's easily one of my favorite reads for that challenge and quite possibly of all the reads I've done this year. You can read my review here.