This is not a new book but nonetheless, with present-buying time just around the corner, I think it’s a good time to review it. Plus, I just found it under my bed.
Alice Winston is 12 years old and trying to help her grouchy father keep his failing horse ranch from collapsing. Her older sister Nona, a star rider and regular golden girl, has absconded with a rodeo cowboy, leaving Alice to do pretty much everything, including keeping her eye on her reclusive mother who is wasting away in an upstairs bedroom.
To help pay the bills, Alice’s dad lets rich housewives board their horses in his stables a recipe for disaster if ever there was one and takes on the talentless daughter of yet another rich housewife in the hope she will lead his stable to glory at the horse shows.
Among this eclectic crowd of Colorado’s rich and poor, Alice learns to tell lies and to detect them, while embarking on a dangerous friendship with a creepy older man. In some ways, there is nothing particularly new here. It’s a little bit Horse Whisperer, a little bit any decent coming-of-age story. And at times you wonder how a 12-year-old kid could be so entranced by the grown-up mess people make of love and life. Sheesh, I was still playing witches and fairies when I was 12.
But on the other hand, it’s set in the desert over a hot summer as a struggling family faces financial ruin and emotional devastation. And there are horses. So what’s not to love?
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
