It is 1939. England has declared war on Germany. Canada will march beside her. And the lives of five young friends living in the ruggedly beautiful northern highlands of Cape Breton will be changed forever. Three of them enlist with the Cape Breton Highlanders and sail off to war in November 1941: musician Benny Doucet; would-be doctor Calum MacPherson; and fisherman Hector MacDonald. But Calum's brother Hamish, handicapped and unable to serve, remains at home in Beinn Barra. And Alex MacGreggor, fisherman and poet, refuses to enlist. Alex is in love with the postmistress with the thick ankles, and when the conscription men come for him he hides in a false wall in his mother's attic. Where White Horses Gallop is a haunting, beautifully written tale of friendship and the trauma of war where emotional bullets riddle the spirit long after the guns in the Arielli Valley and the Delfzijl trenches have grown silent.