Can The Horse Sleep In The House Tonight?

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Join author Shannon O'Donnell as he takes you on a journey back to a simpler time, when lying on your back in the summer grass watching the clouds go by, or playing with your pet pig who lived in the house with you was more important than anything you could possibly have obtained by having more money or stuff.

Using his own early life as an example, Shannon allows the reader to experience the joys, the perils, and sometimes the heart wrenching sadness that comes from living in the country in the 1960's and early 1970's in rural Illinois.

Each of these inspiring, and delightfully told essays illustrate a life lesson, sometimes more than one, while illuminating an important biblical truth.

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Book Excerpt:
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As a child, those cries would send chills down my spine and make me huddle close to my grandmother for protection, her legs a fortress I sought refuge behind. Then, when the background noise of the nursing home became overwhelming and all I wanted to do was flee, I would hear, “Little boy!...Little boy!”, and I would shudder and cling closer to grandma and refuse to look. My grandmother, a no-nonsense woman who always spoke her mind would have none of that. She would pry my arms loose from her legs where they had been wrapped so tightly that she was in danger of passing out, and say to me, “Now stop that and play with Eddie!”

Eddie was a resident of the home who happened to be both mildly retarded and albino: a combination which in that time and place in small-town America left him without a useful position in society, and which ultimately stranded him in a nursing home. By the time I met him, Eddie was a rather short, balding little old man with a paunch who moved across the floor by shuffling his feet in quick little motions. At some time or other in the past, Eddie and I had met and he had decided that I liked to play catch with a small blue ball he carried with him. Each time I came to the nursing home Eddie would slowly, laboriously shuffle his way down the staircase in the main foyer, his pasty white face smiling at me, holding the ball in front of him with one hand and using the other to hold onto the stair rail while saying over and over again, “Little Boy!” He’d chuckle and shake the ball from side to side and say, “Play Catch!”.

When he finally made his way to within three feet or so of me, Eddie would stop and hold up the ball and with a big smile, toss it to me and say, “Wheeeee!”. I did my best to catch it because I was terrified that I might miss and have to crawl under someone’s wheel chair to retrieve it. Eddie and I would toss the ball back and forth four or five times and after that, he was done. He would take the ball from me, give a stiff little wave, then shuffle off to some other part of the building. I would then retreat back to the relative safety of my grandmother’s legs and stare after him, praying that he wouldn’t return and I would wonder why I ever wanted to come to this awful place.

But perhaps my feelings of wanting to flee had less to do with the imagined terror of a little albino man, and more to do with the very real feelings of loss I associated with that particular nursing home.

My father was a jack-of-all trades. One month he would work construction. Another, he would cut timber to earn enough money to put food on the table. At other times, too many times, he would be without work and would spend his days hunting or fishing or drinking Falstaff at the local tavern. My memories of him are few, but...