Archive for Horse Stories

Of Lip Gloss and Horses

November 8, 2011 Book Reviews, Horse Stories No comments
She looks like trouble, doesn't she? Nice girl, though. Nice horse, too.

This month I read Canterwood Crest’s first novel, Take The Reins, by fellow horse-nut Jessica Burkhart. I don’t usually care for Young Adult horse books. But I loved this one. Here’s why.

Canterwood Crest’s first novel opens with a nervous Sasha’s internal debate on lip gloss.

I paused in my reading.

I was looking for a horse book, here, after all. There was a picture on the front of a girl (admittedly, a little sloe-eyed for a tween) wearing a hard-hat and holding the reins of a horse. I wasn’t particularly interested in the emotional dilemmas of a middle school boarding school student, at least, not the ones that didn’t pertain to horses. And in my experience, horse girls just didn’t worry about lip gloss.

What experience? Well, I grew up around horses. From elementary school to high school, I was surrounded by other horse-crazy girls. We walked or begged rides from school to the barn every afternoon. We rode hard, critiqued and insulted one another, and helped each other up when we got dumped. We did our homework (when we remembered) sitting around the stable picnic table. We got home late, ate leftovers from the family dinner we’d missed, showered, and collapsed into bed. On weekends, we worked twelve-hour shifts at a nearby breeding farm, mucking out stalls and stacking hay bales. There was no time for lip gloss. There was no time to worry about boys, or popularity. There was no time for anything. Except horses.

So, Miss Sasha Silver, why on earth are you worried about lip gloss? You’ve just been admitted to Canterwood, a top-tier boarding school with an elite equestrian team; boys shouldn’t even enter the picture.

Click through to see the paperback from Barnes & Noble

Maybe things have changed for girls, or maybe Sasha just got lucky that she could have both. Because she determines that at Canterwood, she’s going to be horsey and popular. And it’s a good thing, too. If she just relied on her equestrian teammates to keep her sane, she never would have made it through her first month.

In some ways, Take The Reins is the most accurate horse story ever written. Everything is perfect in life, except for the horse part. Sasha’s roommate is perfect and amazing. Sasha’s schoolwork is challenging, but she’s capable. Sasha’s crush actually seems like he’s into her. Socially and academically, Sasha is succeeding.

But in the stable, she hasn’t been there ten minutes before she has got herself her very own nemesis, a talented rider named Heather, who doesn’t want any competition for a coveted spot on the advanced team. Heather quickly proves that she is willing to go to insane lengths, even putting her own horse in danger, to stop Sasha from challenging her supremacy as top rider. Her tricks are cruel and clever, and somehow Sasha finds it impossible to prove to the riding coach that the girl is causing trouble. And so Sasha’s Canterwood life, so attractive on the academic end, seems to be collapsing around her at the equestrian end.

As I read about Sasha’s determination to protect her horse, stave off attacks from Heather, and balance riding with studying in order to prepare for the advanced team auditions, Take The Reins suddenly became very realistic to me. All the girls in Canterwood’s equestrian team loved their horses, loved riding, and were desperate to prove themselves. That much is familiar.  I knew these girls. I’d grown up with these girls. I’d been these girls. And after I realized that, Take The Reins was a page-turner to the very end.

The entire Canterwood Crest series is also available online from Amazon.com:

 

Book Review: Hannah’s Home is Small Town Bliss

October 12, 2011 Amazon, Book Reviews, Horse Stories No comments
Hannah's Home by MaryAnn Myers

I loved this book. I loved it. LOVED it.

“Hannah’s Home” tells the story of a very compelling woman—equal parts tough broad, soft-hearted hairdresser, dedicated horsewoman, farmer to her core—who is forced to rebuild her life from the ground up, and finds home in the process.

Hannah's Home by MaryAnn Myers

Hannah is on her own. Well, not entirely. Her husband may have disappeared, but Hannah has the warmth of the small town she lives in, a circle of close friends who love her, and a leopard Appaloosa named for Billy Bob Thornton. And now, she has bought her own farm. Sure, it’s falling apart. Sure, there’s this sourpuss elderly man who is always appearing on her doorstep and calling her the worst insult a farmer can think of: “City Girl.” Sure, she isn’t sure how she’ll afford the mortgage AND food AND her horse.

But Hannah’s a tough country woman. Hannah will manage. Tough country women always manage. Spend enough time around horses, and you’ll meet women like Hannah. They’re practical. They’re fiercely independent. They’ve been let down, they’ve been disappointed, and they don’t have any expectations of princes on white horses coming to their rescue. As long as she has her horse and her truck, this kind of woman can handle anything that comes her way. In Hannah’s case, she’ll roll up her sleeves and move into a crumbling farmhouse (some people say it’s haunted) and ignore all the nay-sayers who tell her the whole place is just going to collapse around her ears.

Surrounding Hannah’s little tumble-down homestead is the rural community she’s spent her whole life in. Small town America is depicted in all its afghan-quilted, pie-on-the-windowsill glory, and if you’ve ever lived out in the boondocks, you might just find yourself missing it a little. From meeting the girls for Chili Night at the Honky Tonk to sweet-talking the prices down from the local junker, from overseeing the wakes at the town funeral parlor to building a small pie-baking empire, from a solitary tuna fish sandwich for dinner to boisterous pot-lucks with friends, “Hannah’s Home” embraces the warmth and comfort of life in small town America.

Just don’t read this book while you’re hungry. There’s enough comfort food in here to empty your pantry.

Get your copy! Hannah’s Home is Available in Kindle and Paperback here at Amazon.

Wildfire Summer (Equestrian Ink)

September 12, 2011 Horse Stories No comments

This post originally appeared at Equestrian Ink

The fires in Texas have been taking hold of my Twitter feed over the past few days – farm owners seeking help to evacuate their horses. After growing up in Florida, I can sympathize. Wildfires are terrifying, worse when you have horses to worry about.

Florida is famous for hurricanes, but actually wildfires are more common. The cycle of the Florida wetlands is fire and flood, and all the subdivisions and interstates in the world haven’t been able to change that. Springtime in Florida smells of smoke.

The year 1998, in particular, was a terrible fire season. Florida’s dry season lasts from November to June; the summertime is humid and loud with thunder, a delightful climate for frogs and alligators. In 1998, though, the seasons seemed to switch. It was unnaturally wet over the winter, and the controlled burns and wildfires that should have thinned the underbrush were doused by rains. In the spring, as the heat returned and the fire season began, everything seemed to go up.

Amarillo, who stood tacked up while we debated our mounted evacuation.

We waited for June’s rains with red-rimmed eyes, brushing the ash from our cars each morning. We listened to our horses’ breathing and fretted over the damage being done to their lungs, we lost sight of the sun in the yellow-tinged skies. We stopped conditioning work and jumping because of the smoke-choked air.

June came, and then July. The rain did not. One by one, the cities cancelled their Fourth of July fireworks. In Daytona Beach, the speedway postponed the Pepsi 400. For the first time ever, the theme parks in Orlando silenced their nightly fireworks shows. It was quiet, and hot, and hard to breathe.

I worked at an orange grove stand in the evenings, listening to the radio and writing stories and eating grapefruit slices. (Evenings are not busy times for beachside orange grove stands.) It was nearly time for me to leave when news came over the radio that a fire was burning out of control on the south side of the Kennedy Space Center. My horse lived within sight of that southern fenceline. I closed the shop early and flung myself into my car.

When I drove across the causeway, I looked north, towards the space center. I could see the flames leaping into the air, ten miles away. The entire shoreline looked apocalyptic.

Night fell as I drove into the smoke, two hours before sunset. It was pitch black on the farm road; I barely saw the fireman in my path as I crept along, nose to the steering wheel.

He leaned into the car. “You can’t go any further,” he said.

“I have to get my horse out,” I told him. “He’s down the next driveway. We have a back way out, onto Tropical Trail.” Tropical Trail was a road to the south, leading away from the flames. I didn’t exactly have a road to get to it, but I knew the way.

He stepped back. “We’ll be up that driveway in half an hour. Don’t be there.”

My riding buddy was already there when I leapt out my car; both our horses were tacked up. “Do we go now, or wait?” she asked.

But I was distracted. There were six other boarders, and no sign of any of them. The horses were in the pastures. “Is no one else here?”

“Nope,” she said. “It’s just us.”

“What do we do with their horses?” There were no trailers. There were no trucks. We were two high school girls, about to ride our horses through wood trails and orange groves to get them to open space.
We couldn’t get out the other horses. This wasn’t an adventure novel, this wasn’t The Saddle Club – this was real life.

“The fireman down there said he’d open the gate,” she said. “If they end up coming down here.”

“Well.” I didn’t know what to say that. I did the only thing I knew to do in times of crisis: took my horse’s reins and swung into the saddle. We sat, mounted, as the smoke swirled and the sirens wailed, waiting.

Finally, a fire truck appeared in the barn driveway.

“This is it,” I said. I looked at my car. “Sorry, car.”

But we got a reprieve. A fireman came out of the truck and walked up to us. “We’re calling off the evacuation,” he said. “Wind’s changing and it’s contained to the space center.” He looked us over, teenagers on horseback, and shook his head. “You girls and your horses.”

It rained a week later.