I requested this for consideration for Book Riot's All the Books podcast for its release date, but my cohost ended up reviewing it instead.

I love music and reading all the songs mentioned in this book warranted White Horse with a 2 star review. Music was played in background when entering bar or things reminded main character of lyrics to a song. I enjoyed this very much. However, the book is a two at best. It was scattered thoughts, scattered side characters, immature main character and mystery not thriller. The author threw in a lot of unnecessary Native American topics. Ideas were everywhere. Hot mess. Thank you NetGalley and Flatiron Books for ARC read for my opinion.

I wish the horror elements in this one were a bit more present; they are sprinkled throughout and then really ratchet up at the end of the novel. Overall, I was underwhelmed with this one.

This book is a great mix of thriller and ghost story from a culture I am not well versed in. A first round pick for libraries.

Thank you to netgalley for providing an e-galley for review. White Horse is a tale of growing up but then getting stuck. Adults don't have all the answers and they get stuck in their ways and stuck in their thoughts and stuck in what they think happened in the past. Until new information is given to change them. Kari thinks her mother left when she was only 3 days old, leaving her and her father behind. He father is now unavailable due to a car accident and Kari is full of resentment. Then her cousin finds a bracelet. Then ghosts start showing up.

Great tale of family trauma mixed with horror: I loved the mc and her homage to her heritage throughout. So good so sad so well done!

Ethereal, haunting cover art immediately piqued my interest in this one! Underneath the hard layers of grit and heavy metal in the smoky White Horse bar, Kari James is haunted by her best friend who succumbed to drug abuse. Kari led that same lifestyle, trying to escape the memories of her mother who went missing and a future of caretaking for her invalid father. After an heirloom bracelet causes Kari to begin having visions, she delves deep into her indigenous roots and family history to discover what really happened to her mother. A dark presence called the Lofa looms, and Kari knows her mother’s spirit will not rest until she uncovers the truth. Told through the backdrop of Megadeath albums and Stephen King’s The Shining, Kari is also determined to assuage the guilt she feels over her best friend’s death. Loved this book, and full of so much Native American lore and history! There are several settings that took place, which I enjoy in books, and the level of detail included about The Shining and Stanley Hotel was really awesome. I look forward to reading what else this author puts out!

A gritty, fascinating indigenous horror story. Kari was an intriguing narrator if a little overwhelming. I am trying to push myself to read more indigenous #ownvoices and this is inspiring me even further. That being said, there was a lot going on here and it was a little confusing to follow all the subplots at times. Overall, intriguing.

This is a debut ghost story that will knock your socks off. When Kari James receives her absent mother’s bracelet from a cousin, she swears it’s haunted and goes on a mission to solve the mystery of why her mother left her all those years ago.

Moody. Gritty. These are good descriptors for this novel.

Visions of her mother launch Kari into an investigation of where her mother went and how she passed. Kari has to process her feelings of anger and abandonment while also dealing with persistent and terrifying dreams and visions which all lead her to the truth.

I like when horror is used to explore larger issues and this one seems to bring MMIW into the conversation. Definitely some tough reading especially towards the end. Overall, a good first novel from Erika T. Wurth.

WHITE HORSE is innovative and compelling, seamlessly combining modern life with Native American mythology and horror. At first the chapters seemed too distinctive and disjointed, but as I continued to read I grew to appreciate how each vignette into Kari's life built upon the last and revealed deeper truths about her as a whole. Wurth does an excellent job depicting the complexities of friendship, trauma, and how connecting to the past leads to clarity in the present.

Thank you so much Flatiron Books for the gifted copy.

I have a book recommendation for you! I just finished WHITE HORSE and it is literary horror at its finest.

An 35 yr old indigenous woman called Kari is taking care of her now permanently injured father. She is not enjoying her life and is a frequent flyer at the bar WHITE HORSE. Her cousin Debby shows up with a bracelet that once belonged to her mother. Kari had always thought her mother abandoned her, but now something is telling her different. This bracelet is summoning ghosts and the darkest of family secrets. She must find out what happened to her mother all of those years ago.

This story has everything I wanted it to be. It is a stellar combination of mystery, ghosts, and indigenous legends. And I absolutely love that the object in question is essentially haunted. I had HIGH expectations for WHITE HORSE…and Erika T. Wurth delivered.

Also, A++ for writing a sarcastic metal-band-crazy, Stephen King-loving protagonist! Sarcasm is my love language. Both Kari and I love THE SHINING

The kick of a horse, its force, it's what? About eight times its body weight, yeah, and it clocks in upwards of 200 miles per hour. So, yeah, that kick, the power behind it, that's White Horse. And it lands square in the face, blinding you, stars all a-swirling overhead, eyes watering, nose and mouth streaming blood.

White Horse is a force to be reckoned with. And yes, as Stephen Graham Jones says, "it's metal to the end." Yes, yes, yes. Oh, yes.

Like flirting with a mystery and waiting on some deal, it seeps in, takes over and consumes. You're in it, and there's no way out but through.

White Horse is metal, yes, and horror and mystery and dread and an ever-intensifying force, bent on pummeling you through and through. But, no worries, here: the way out (through), that exit, it's got heart for days, and it will heal yours, build you back better than before.

I’ve spent the year listening to and reading books by Native voices and this is a knockout piece! Loved the writing style and characters. Interesting plot. I had a hard time reading this ARC on a screen, so I ended up pre-ordering the hardcopy. I can’t do kindle books as I work in front of a computer all day. Loved this unique voice in fiction and can’t wait to read what’s next!

An incredible read! The book absolutely changes 61% in! If you like Stephen King or his book The Shining, you are in for a treat!

The nitty-gritty: Complex relationships and a ghostly mystery make Erika T. Wurth's debut novel a winner. 

White Horse really surprised me. The story is tagged as “horror” on Goodreads but I’m calling it a “ghost story” because there’s nothing really horrific or scary about it, although the overall mood is dark and eerie. I really enjoyed the mix of Native American lore and history and a good dollop of family drama, as well as Kari’s ghostly encounters and visions. White Horse is a slow burn mystery that really grew on me, and the ending was fantastic.

The story is told from Kari James’s point of view. Kari is a thirty-five year old Native American (or urban Indian, as she calls herself) living in Idaho Springs, Colorado. She left a life of hard drugs and alcohol behind after her best friend Jaime died of an overdose. Now she spends her evenings at the White Horse, the local Indian bar and the one place in town she can be herself. Between bartending and waitressing, Kari’s mostly content with her life, and she even has aspirations of buying the White Horse some day.

But when her cousin Debby gives Kari an old family bracelet that used to belong to her mother Cecelia, Kari is plunged into a dangerous mystery. Whenever Kari touches the bracelet, she sees the ghost of her mother, who is clearly trying to communicate with her. With the help of Auntie Squeaker, a local medicine woman, and a retired cop, Kari decides to dig deeper into her mother’s disappearance, which was never solved. She hopes that by uncovering the truth, she can put her mother’s spirit to rest. Now everywhere she goes, Kari sees visions of her mother giving her clues that point to what really happened the day she disappeared.

I loved the setting and the feeling of place and nostalgia that Wurth evokes in her story. Kari has spent her entire life in the Idaho Springs area, and the reader gets to relive her rather unconventional youth. Music plays an important part in Kari’s life, especially heavy metal. She practically worships Megadeth and other heavy metal bands, music that shaped her teen years and became a symbol for the pain of losing Jaime. Kari was swept up into the drug scene at an early age, experimenting with sex and alcohol as well, and this background information is conveyed through occasional flashbacks that felt seamlessly integrated into the story. I also loved that Stephen King is important to Kari, and her favorite book is The Shining, which she reads over and over. There’s even a scene set at the Stanley Hotel, the setting that inspired King’s Overlook, and I loved the way that scene ties in with the ghosts who are haunting Kari.

There is quite a bit of family drama in the story, which some readers are going to like and others aren’t. Like many reviewers, I wasn’t as thrilled with the drama surrounding Debby, her husband Jack and Kari. Jack is a controlling jerk and doesn’t like Debby spending time with Kari, which forces Debby to sneak around in order to spend time with her friend. I didn’t like the way Debby sided with Jack and just accepted his behavior, while Kari was pushed aside. Luckily the author resolves this weird dynamic at the end, although I’m not sure how believable it was.

What I did love was the relationship between Kari and her father, who suffers from brain damage from a car accident. Kari spends hours with him, watching old shows on TV, and she stands up for him even after another family member tries to pin a terrible crime on him. I also loved the flashbacks with Jaime and the tender relationship between the two girls. Kari still mourns the loss of her friend and the emotions are palpable.

The scenes with Cecelia’s ghost were very well done. Eventually Kari is transported into visions where she’s seeing things through her mother’s eyes, which gives the story a sort of dreamy vibe. Wurth uses Apache mythology and symbols, like Geronimo’s war club, a weapon that has the power to protect the owner from a horrible monster called the Lofa. There are some subtle speculative moments that involve the Lofa, and it was sometimes hard to tell whether Kari was actually seeing the monster, or whether it was part of her dreams and visions. Some readers might think these scenes are too vague, but for me they worked. And I loved reading about the American Indian Movement protests (which I’m sad to say I knew nothing about), and how Cecelia became involved with the group. The author herself is of Apache, Chickasaw and Cherokee descent, and I loved the way she incorporates her own experiences into the story.

Eventually Kari figures out what really happened to Cecelia, and it’s heartbreaking. But along the way she’s introduced to a couple of long lost family members, some who are good and some who aren’t. I was surprised how emotionally satisfying the ending was. Despite the sadness of Kari’s past, it was nice to have a feel-good ending that gave me hope for these characters.

This is Erika T. Wurth’s debut novel, and I do hope she’s working on another one. I’m very excited to see what she does next.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

Kari James is an urban Indian in her mid-thirties whose life is in stasis. She spends most of her time at her favorite bar, the White Horse, drinking with her cousin Debby, fangirling over Megadeath's Dave Mustaine, and reading horror novels. When she's not at the bar or working two jobs, she's visiting her permanently disabled father, who raised her alone after her mom left their family when Kari was two days old. But Kari's relatively peaceful existence is thrown into chaos when Debby discovers an old bracelet that belonged to Kari's mother. When Kari touches the bracelet, she unwittingly summons both the ghost of her mother and a more threatening entity, both of whom begin to haunt her with frightening visions. Kari realizes that, in order to have any kind of a future, she first needs to reckon with her past.

Part ghost story, part family drama, White Horse is a compelling, original novel steeped in Indigenous folklore and legends. There are some scenes of horror, which are conveyed with intensity in fervent, cinematic prose, but for me the horror aspects of the plot take a backseat to the much more important story of identity and healing that Erika Wurth is telling. The Denver of Wurth's novel is one the tourists don't see: a grittier place, a land of dive bars and trailer parks, where sinister secrets are kept and dark horrors are faced. This is Kari's world, and Wurth does an incredible job developing her character. She's the beating heart of this novel: sarcastic and unapologetic, jaded but also somehow naive, and so sympathetic as we follow her on her journey into her past, and eventually to her future. Her relationships with the other characters are complex and authentic.

While the narrative does feel unfocused and uneven at times, Wurth tells an important story in White Horse, with themes of grief and recovery, multi-generational trauma and addiction, Indigenous identity and the complexities of family relationships. White Horse is imaginative and profound, a worthwhile read for Native American Heritage Month this November.

I did an "in conversation" event at Elliott Bay Book Company last night (11/8/22) with the author where she did a reading, answered all my questions, Q & A with the audience, and did a signing.
We had a great time! Everyone should book her to engage with readers. This book is perfect for newcomers to the horror genre. It's centered around female best friends going through life struggles together as well as a complex, multi-layered murder mystery. The horror scenes are intense and cinematic. The emotional punches land every, single, time. Great ending. Loved the social commentary, the story told through a Native American lens and the supernatural/paranormal elements. The perfect horror/crime mash-up

I used to stray away from the horror/mystery/thriller genres, but I’m starting to sense a change in the tides.

White Horse is a work of literary horror set in the present day Denver area. Our protagonist, Kari, is a 30-something urban Indian woman of mixed Indigenous ancestry. A bracelet handed down from her family’s past starts Kari down a path toward finally uncovering the long unsolved mystery surrounding her Native mother’s sudden disappearance.

I love this book, probably for all the wrong (non-horror) reasons. In the book, Kari notes that the bracelet “hummed with power, with history,” and I feel the same about Wurth’s story. There’s so much power in knowing our histories, and through this story we learn with Kari: how her Native families came to be urban Indians, how they held on to bits of their culture, how they lost bits of it, how urban Indians sought each other our for support and created community, the real complexity that comes with being Indigenous from two sides of an imaginary (political) border, and the real difficulty non-Indigenous peoples can have accepting Indigenous peoples in our entirety-not just our bodies, not just our art. How even those who love an Indigenous person may struggle to acknowledge and accept that through our culture the world looks different to us than it does to them. We see this most strikingly in Nessie, who has the gift of sight, of visions, of “shining.”

So when I say that I’m warming to the genre, I say that half-heartedly. What I’m coming to realize is that I have always loved a good scary story from home, and from other Native communities. Every community has their own and every storyteller has their own version, their own flare. I’ve never really thought of our stories as “horror” because they are real stories, based on real beings that walk the earth. Our stories are rich in meaning and metaphor, but they come from something real, and usually if you know how to listen, you’ll realize that you’re hearing them for a reason.

I will not stop recommending this book, along with Kali Fajardo-Anstine's "Woman of Light" for anyone looking to dive deeper into the complexities of peoplehood and growing up in the inter-mountain/southwest.

The last thing Kari wants is to deal with her ghosts; she’d much rather hang out at the local bar or listen to heavy metal. But when a cousin gives her a bracelet that belonged to Kari’s long missing mother, her mother’s actual ghost is conjured, along with a dark creature that won’t stop hunting Kari until she uncovers her family’s darkest secrets.

Atmospheric, dark, irreverent, heavy metal mystery! Kari walks the line of likable and unlikable protagonist so well. I love the interweaving of fantastical elements, and the big reveal hits just right. It's not overly horrory, but scary enough to make you wonder if you're seeing things in the dark. Fantastic read!