Ride the White Horse: A Checkered Jockey's Story of Racing, Rage and Redemption
Eddie Donnally has lived a most unusual life. He is the only professional horse jockey to have won an Eclipse Award for Newspaper Writing and one who has been a television show producer, racing show host, certified fund raiser, ordained minister and hospital and hospice chaplain. A jockey for 19-years, he rode in some 10,000 races at 54 tracks, winning an estimated 1,000. He was once indicted for sports bribery and left the Los Angeles Twin Towers jail to begin his ministry career at the Los Angeles Dream Center, where in less than five years, was licensed as a International Church of the Foursquare Gospel minister.    A former journalist at the “Dallas Morning News,” he’s published over 100 articles in a score of newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times and their Sunday Magazine. He was an Associate Pastor at two Los Angeles Foursquare Churches and is an endorsed chaplain. He served as Director of Development for the Race Track Chaplaincy of America for eight years. There, he founded the “White Horse Award,” given each year during Breeders’ Cup week to an underserved racing hero. He earned a Certificate in Fund Raising from UCLA and holds a Doctorate of Ministry.      His story has been published in magazines and books, including “Chicken Soup for the Recovering Soul,” discussed on radio shows and featured on “The 700 Club.” He is a frequent speaker in churches, recovery conferences and rehab centers. He shares his life as a checkered jockey, his sibling sexual trauma and battles with a crack cocaine addiction and same sex promiscuity, and the supernatural jail cell miracle in 1996 that put him in full time ministry since. He is active in disaster response and one of 20 persons qualified to train senior lay leaders and pastors in his denomination's Disaster Response Ministry. He has provided spiritual care following wildfires and train crashes in CA, the earthquake in Haiti , tornados in Northern Alabama and Joplin MS, and more recently on Staten Island following Superstorm Sandy. He and his wife Sandi live in Clearwater Florida where he ministers as a hospice and hospital chaplain and continues to write and speak.  In conjunction with the book, he is writing a blog, "Recovery in Racing," which profiles horse racing's best known members of its recovering community.    Check out his website at www.ridethewhitehorse.org or email him at ridethewhitehorse1@gmail.com