No Small Thing, Blah Blah Blah

No Small Thing
by Natale Ghent
Published: 2005

I picked this up a while back and just now got around to reading it. No Small Thing was short-listed for the Canadian Library Association's Book of the Year and the Rocky Mountain Book Award, so I guess this is what's called a quality horse book. Well, a quality horse book aimed to the 9-12 crowd in any case.

When twelve-year-old Nathaniel and his sisters, Cid and Queenie, discover an ad for a free pony, they can hardly believe their luck. But how will they afford to take care of it? And what will their struggling single mother say? Amazingly, she says yes. And so begins a year of discovery for Nat, who must deal with his father's absence, look out for Queenie, who is "different," and sort out his feelings about a rich, pretty girl at school. Life isn't easy, but Nat knows he has his very own pony waiting for him at the end of every day. Until a fire destroys the barn....

This is another one of those first-person stories told from the male perspective. Which is fine, really, and would be great if not for the fact that Nat is superbly dull. Granted, I didn't expect this to be a Judy Blume novel or anything, but honestly we've got a twelve-year-old kid who, upon being bestowed with his first kiss, starts to fantasize about marriage and babies? What? Well, we'll get to that later.

The novel starts out with the ad for the free pony. Nat and his sisters, Cid and Queenie, had ponies previously back when their life was splendid and the picture of domestic bliss. But that was before. When they lived in Illinois. I think. But then they moved to Ontario and their dad left and now their mom makes almost no money and they never have new jeans to wear. These people sound like prime candidates for pony ownership, don't you think?

When they see the pony they practically fall upon it like the pony-starved children they are. The people who are giving it away couldn't get their own kids interested in it, so Nat takes Queenie's bridle (she asked for a bridle one year, and thus got a bridle...despite not owning a horse at the time) and puts it on the pony and off they go. Oh, I should also mention that this pony is pretty much just how it looks on the cover, its name is Smokey and it is a stallion. That's right. A stallion.

They walk Smokey off back to town and once they are far enough down the road they start to ride it. Bareback. Without helmets. Once they stick little 8-year-old Queenie up there you just know something horrible is going to happen. I mean, really, this is just too obvious. So what happens, you may ask? A giant dog comes out of nowhere and attacks them. Bet you didn't see that happening, right? Well, either way, something was going to happen and Queenie falls off and everyone tries to kick this dog and Smokey runs away, but comes back. Only Queenie breaks her collarbone, which means their mother is going to have to know about this pony thing. So they stick Smokey in an extremely cheap nearby boarding stable and go home, where Nat's mom proceeds to slap him around before whisking Queenie off to the hospital. When she comes back she demands that Nat take the pony back, and he erupts into one of his "i hate you!" fits and runs away. To the barn. And because his mom is all shocked and dismayed that her son blames her for his lot in life, she lets him keep the pony so long as he keeps paying for it out of his paper route money.

But then one of the other boarders gets all snippy because Smokey is a stallion. Smokey is the most pleasant stallion around, but the other boarder won't have it and Nat glumly decides to cut off Smokey's balls. Poor, poor Smokey. Nat certainly disapproves of this, because he wouldn't want his balls cut off, after all. No, really. So they spend the rest of his money on gelding Smokey and Nat worries about whether or not Smokey will be the same. Of course, he's still the same. They proceed to ride him around bareback without helmets and then come up with this method of driving him around by attaching twine to his halter and making him drag their sled and if this sounds like some teenybopper fantasy, then it really is.

Eventually Nat probably starts having wet dreams about this girl named Cheryl, who gets all excited about Smokey. But this is not a Judy Blume book, so Nat bottles these feelings down deep and thinks about Cheryl's tight sweater and about how wonderful it will be when she's carrying his children or something to that effect. Cheryl kisses Nat, provoking all of these domestic feelings, but Cheryl is unfortunately rich and cannot be seen with Nat and inexplicably decides to start seeing this high school boy who can drive although she's only 13, so ew. Nat is suitably crushed, so he can stop worrying about his appearance and focus on how Smokey is living in sub par conditions. The owner of the barn has a horse he doesn't really take care of, so during a blizzard he really doesn't take care of the horse and this means a beam has to fall on said horse and break its neck.

This makes every other boarder leave the stable except for Nat and Smokey, because he can't afford to go anywhere else. Poor people, after all, can't be choosers. So he just waits around until the barn goes up into flames. Smokey is okay, but the barn is done. The owner of the barn suggests that they sell Smokey to these rich people who want to enter Smokey in some pony shows or whatnot. Now, I will try to completely ignore the fact that this drunkard guy with the worst stable in the city knows well-to-do people well enough to suggest a horse for their precious snobby boy to buy, but...no, I can't ignore that. Like hell the guy who's hardly been around in the novel is suddenly going to pop up and tell Nat that his rich friends want to buy his pony. Right. Anyway, right about here Nat's mom tells the kids that she has to sell the house. She can't pay her electricity bill, and has $5 in her account at one point that she spent on a Christmas tree, so the house has got to go. Nat and Cid freak out on her, but eventually come to their senses and decide to sell Smokey.

Only the snobby boy comes to pick Smokey up and Nat can't do it. He rides off on Smokey and fantasizes some more about living on the land with his sparkling fairy pony. Then a police cruiser finds him and he tries to outrun the cruiser and nearly runs over an old lady before being cornered and told that he has to, you know, go home. He goes home, and his mom tells him he can keep Smokey because the money they'll get from the house will cover his expenses. Although, given that I just sold a house, methinks someone is incredibly short sighted.

Thrilled that he can keep Smokey, Nat goes and takes a bath and ponders the meaning of the universe. Not surprisingly, Smokey is the center of the universe.

• So, who is really sick of the we're-poor-but-we-can-keep-a-pony/horse-no-problem! plot? The whole point of No Small Thing is that Smokey is NO SMALL THING. He's big and important and should be difficult to take care of when you have $5 TOTAL. Then again, if you only have $5, methinks you probably shouldn't have a mortgage.
  

• At the end, Nat just goes and takes a bath. No one stops to think about how they're going to pay for this pony's upkeep until the house is sold and they'll suddenly have this surplus of cash. Where is Smokey going to live? Their back yard?

Well, whatever. The biggest issue with this book is that very little seems to happen. Although, I will always be amused with Nat being all dismayed because he has to geld Smokey. That was pretty entertaining. The rest was a bit overblown, in my opinion.

Bonnie and the Haunted Farm, or Why Dogs and Stepsisters are Evil

Bonnie and the Haunted Farm
by Barbara van Tuyl
Published: 1974

If you're wondering to yourself if this book was published in October right in time for the holidays, then you would be completely correct. Yeah, it seems rather silly, but I'm not kidding. October 1974. I guess someone at Signet thought horse crazy girls everywhere would finish up their trick or treating and then read this book by flashlight in their darkened room because this book has it all: insane asylums, ghosts, murder...even implied incest! Yes, truly this was the Halloween book to buy in 1974.

Accidents, or evil?

When young trainer Monty Everett presented Julie with a new stallion, Cache, Julie's happiness seemed complete. Bonnie, her champion racer, was soon to be a mother, and now she had a second horse to call her own. Between training Cache, worrying over Bonnie, and befriending handsome Dirk Markham and his sister Alexis, the new owners of Croydon Farm, Julie found her days filled with excitement.

And then accidents started happening at Croydon: Julie was hurt in an inexplicable fall, Cache was injured, and Julie had to spend a terror-filled evening at Croydon, with only the ghost of its tragic past for company. Coincidence or campaign of terror? Was someone trying to scare Julie away from the Markhams and Croydon Farm? Julie could not know the danger her quest for answers would bring to her and her prized Sunbonnet....

This blurb is in the past tense, which for some reason really annoys me. It's like someone decided to treat it like a book report instead of a summary intended to sell copies of this book. Plus, Dirk Markham? What is this, Harlequin Romance all of a sudden? Julie gives Ashleigh Griffen herself a run for her money in regards to acting completely and irritatingly innocent, and we're going to throw a DIRK in her direction? This just seems extremely wrong to me.

Well, whatever. Dirk or no Dirk, Julie's nineteen now and she's going to have to learn about the wonders of sex somehow. If Monty doesn't get around to it eventually, Dirk is ready and willing. However, I'm getting ahead of myself. We haven't even met Dirk yet. Dirk. God, what the hell? For sanity's sake, I wandered over to www.babynames.com and discovered it's a German form of Derek meaning Famous Ruler, and that still doesn't help.

This book opens up with Julie going all crazy about this girl called Lisa Marsden. Apparently Deepwater or Fieldstone Farm (I am pretty sure this book takes place at Fieldstone Farm, Deepwater's breeding farm, but I can never be sure who's supposed to be where and why...it is very confusing) broke her horse for her because her horse is persnickety when it comes to bridles. Julie is all excited because Lisa is going to ride this horse in a show and yay, oh yay, let's all go and see this horse. Leon Pitt agrees, but not before Julie sees his newspaper and discovers that Croydon Farm has been sold. Croydon Farm is the neighboring farm that's been uninhabited for something like a decade because all these horrible things happened and Leon immediately delves into it because it's important to set the scene. Leon tells Julie that this young couple bought the farm and their kid managed to drown in a pond on the property. If this wasn't bad enough, the couple decides to adopt this orphan who winds up taking an ax to their heads when he's a teenager. Everyone is appropriately stunned and so the kid confesses to his best friend and is pronounced quite crazy and shuffled off into some state hospital where he's destined for shock therapy and padded walls.

Therefore Croydon Farm is evil. Moving on to the show. Julie meets up with Lisa, who's only purpose seems to be discussing why Monty and Julie aren't having sex. Only this is 1974, so she's asking why they aren't married already. Julie is embarrassed and tries to hide the fact that she's blushing and not thinking about having sex with Monty because oh my God she is 19 and he is 23 and what is the world coming to? Well, whatever, because she gets home from the show and there's Monty, complete with a new horse just for her. So she loses it and kisses him (which might be their first kiss, but then it might not be because the book is playing around with this relationship to the point of absurdity and Barbara van Tuyl is apparently extremely coy) and Monty is all pleased. The horse is a gray stallion...yeah, it's Cache. With a ch and not an sh, but Julie does not care so for all we know she spells it Cash.

Anyway, while Monty is home from the track we have to take advantage of this situation. The new neighbors arrive and Leon or Stash or someone tells Julie to bring a welcome basket over. Because that there's a woman's work. Julie drags Monty along with her because she's scared of the place and doesn't know what to expect. Apparently she wasn't expecting Paul Newman to answer the door, but believe me when I say that Monty is really annoyed about it. Dirk Markham is just a dream boat, who actually is described as a "young Paul Newman." How can we resist such a temptation? He's all, yay visitors! And Monty is all oh no. Julie is all, tell me all about your horses and your animals while I completely ignore the fact that you are staring at me while Monty glares at you! And then there's Dirk's sister, Alexis, who is basically the ice queen. Dirk wants them to all stay and visit for a while and Monty's trying his hardest to get Julie out of the house because he's the jealous type, and Alexis is thrilled to see them leave because she's also the jealous type and can we see the plot developing here? Okay, just checking.

Then we all begin the wait for Bonnie to give birth. While this happens, Julie's new dog, Pushy, a St. Bernard, injures himself and she has to take him off for some stitches while Stash and Leon (doing their best Dr. Holmes and Mr. Watson impression) go to Julie's cottage to find out why. Well, it doesn't take a lot of guessing. There's broken glass all over the kitchen floor, and they pick it all up and take it to the barn to reconstruct whatever it was that broke. This...must have been extremely time consuming. However, they manage to put it back together because there's this red paint on the glass (not blood, we are helpfully informed, because someone has read their Dostoyevsky and remembered that blood turns brown when dry). So, what's the broken object? It's a glass ax! But oh my gosh, this clearly is a sign because the Croydon murders were committed with an ax! Let's not tell Julie what's going on because, you know, that would just freak her out and ruin a giant plot point we can save for later. So Julie comes back and Bonnie has her twins (Deerstalker and Highland Tam), only the filly is all weak and the vet wants to kill her on sight because that's what people did in novels by Barbara van Tuyl and K.M. Peyton. Julie saves the filly, again doing her best Ashleigh Griffen impression, and Tam grows up all healthy but small and therefore will probably be no good at anything.

This is when Dirk makes his appearance again, causing chaos between Leon and Stash as Stash ruthlessly roots for Monty and Leon doesn't appear to really care either way. Dirk invites Julie to come see his crazy off track thoroughbred he's renamed Soul-searching. I hate horse names involving hyphens. I can't explain it. But that's besides the point. Julie starts coming over to Croydon all the time because Dirk wants to help her out with retraining Cache to jump. Or do something vaguely event oriented with. I don't know. There was so much technical jump/hunter/blah blah blah talk in this book I zoned out a lot when something evil wasn't happening. So then Dirk falls in love with her. He tells her so. Julie's response?

"I'm quite certain, Mr. Markham, that we'd better not mention the subject again until I've thought it out some."

Damn, I should have taken some pointers from Julie when I was her age. Anyway, determined to wait her out, Dirk then asks her a neighborly favor of feeding the horses and dogs (he's got a kennel of hounds for his drag hunting purposes) tomorrow while he's away. Julie agrees and thus he goes away. She comes over the next day, drags her own dogs with her (remember back to Sunbonnet: Filly of the Year, when I said you can make any plot work by giving your main character a dog? Well, keep that in mind) takes care of everything, and winds up with all 20 hounds running loose on the property. She keeps putting them in the kennel and they keep getting out and eventually she discovers there's a second door that's open and so once that's solved she sticks them all in the kennel and then her dog runs away. Seriously, Julie, put the dog on a leash. Nana looks responsible, but she's annoying as all hell.

Thus she winds up in the house, with her car dead, and somehow falls asleep in the den. When she wakes up there's a raging storm outside and she discovers that there's a giant bloodstain on the floor. So this would be the room where the ax murder happened back when, although Julie is not at all scared. She's all, well, great, I'll just leave now. But then the wind or something slams the door shut and she's stuck because the door is all warped and won't work. Now she's basically locked in the house's most upsetting room and this is when the noises start. Shuffling footstep noises and so forth. Then her St. Bernard appears in the window and she opens it up and he hops inside. It's pouring out, thus she doesn't want to go outside. Which I find stupid because, you know, I'm not good in potentially threatening situations where I'm cornered in a room. I'd rather jump out the window, but not Julie. Not even when the footsteps become banging noises out in the hall. Then someone throws a rock through the window. Julie takes this all in stride, like it's normal.

This keeps going and going until Monty, Leon and Stash show up and crawl in the window also. After she's been gone for hours on end I guess they decided something was up, and rather then go to bed they went after her. They manage to open the door and discover that the banging noise was that stupid BEAGLE who got her head stuck in a grease jar and was banging her head repeatedly against the wall. The footstep noise was Pushy, because he drags his giant dog feet.

Anyway, we discover that Alexis is really Dirk's stepsister. And Dirk is like 28. Alexis has been all rude or not around when Julie is at Croydon, which is supposed to imply that because she's actually not related to Dirk she wants his manliness for herself. Then Julie kisses Monty and Monty kisses her back and oh my God hearts and rainbows, only it involves coffee and awkwardness and the word "disengaged," which I hate. Absolutely nothing comes of this.

So then the following stuff happens:
1. Julie and Dirk measure a sequence of jumps. They go to tack up the horses and come back to the jumps, going through them as planned except the last jump has been moved. This causes Julie to fall off. Damn.
2. Dirk offers his saddle to Julie to test out, because his saddle is super awesome. She jumps with it and the stirrup breaks and she falls and twists her ankle. Damn.
3. Cache injures himself in this stirrup episode. Double damn.
4. Instead of putting pink antibiotic cream on Cache's injury, the containers get confused and merc-oxide blister gets put on it instead, causing a complete leg melt down and lays up Cache for six weeks instead of a few days.
5. Dirk invites Julie on a drag hunt, and her horse is all slow and then a "figure" spooks her horse and this is meant to freak her out or something.

This all takes a while, as you can imagine. I'm just being efficient at this point. In the middle of this, Alexis keeps telling Julie that she thinks there are ghosts on the property and Stash thinks Dirk is really the crazy guy who somehow escaped from his padded room and came back to exact revenge, or something. All of this culminates in a) Stash and Leon yelling at Monty to tell Julie he loves her for Christ's sake and b) Bonnie being stolen again. This is really kind of a been there, done that sort of plot. Only this time Nana comes to the rescue and finds Bonnie on Croydon's property. Dirk is all pissed off, so they take the mare back to Fieldstone Farm and Alexis is there and Alexis goes all pale and, as you have probably guessed by now, Alexis is our culprit because she wants her stepbrother and was all pissed off because he wanted Julie.

In classic fictional form, Alexis comes out with all of it. She planted the glass ax, which shattered because Pushy scared her. She did all the rest of it, and stole Bonnie, thinking that would at least distract Julie for a while until she could put Bonnie back on Fieldstone's property. So...yeah. Nevertheless, Dirk does not want to have sex with his stepsister, so she gets sent to the padded room. Then everyone muses about how they thought Dirk was the crazy ax murderer guy, and he says haha that's funny but actually I'm that guy's best friend.

And everyone sort of shuts up very quickly. So it turns out that the crazy ax murderer guy sort of went extra crazy and started saying he saw his dead parents, but twisted it around and said he killed them when he didn't. Dirk always believed that he never killed his parents, but no one could ever prove it, especially when the guy confessed. So Dirk bought the place thinking he could find some clue to prove the guy innocent. As luck would have it, Julie was doing some snooping before the drag hunt, and found the murder weapon under the previously stained, recently sanded floorboard. The murderer's prints are all over it because the guy was apparently stupid, and Julie told no one because no one tells anyone anything in these books. Because sharing important information is seen as "worrying someone unnecessarily." So they get the cops back and they find out that some crazy person who was not the couple's adopted son was the real killer and so now Dirk's friend is free to roam the Kentucky countryside. And, as it always happens in these books, Tolkov is there with job in hand for the previously crazy ex-lunatic. Because Mr. Tolkov is awesome and apparently has no standards.

• Julie describes Monty as antediluvian. Which means "of or relating to the period before the flood described in the Bible." Poor Monty.

• The end of the book is basically dedicated to the budding competition between Monty and Dirk for Julie. Here I thought we'd come to some closure on this topic by now, but no. We are treated to all sorts of talk about how Monty is a closer and Dirk is a front runner and how this race is going to come down to the wire. They have this grudging respect for one another now as they talk about tote boards while Julie's playing around with her dogs, completely oblivious to the fact that she's being treated like a prize. It makes me want to hit both of them.

So, that's it. One more book left in this series, because Bonnie is headed back to the racetrack in The Betrayal of Bonnie. To Barbara's credit, she does say rather point blank that mares who have been bred rarely, if ever, return to their racing careers. So she makes a point of stating that it's almost ludicrous to expect Bonnie to make a comeback. The only reason I can think of for this plot even happening is because she needs to get Monty and Julie together soonish, and Bonnie's foals are too young to provide much plot, therefore Bonnie is our dependable fall back plan. We shall see how it works.

the word is spreading

Want more recaps and reviews of Thoroughbred and various other horsey books? It looks like XTra Pony's Bookshelf is ready and willing to help fill the astonishing void the Whitebrook Farm Blog has been attempting to fill all by itself. We all need more fun horse book recaps, right? I'll be placing a link to it over in the links section, for further reference.

And really, are we this big already? Five contributors and 115 posts in half a year? Damn, I'm going to have to actually write an About Us statement and formally introduce everyone, aren't I?

Damn.

Yet Another Star-Studded Story

Star of Shadowbrook Farm
By Joanna Campbell
Published: August 1992
Republished as Ashleigh's Thoroughbred Collection: May 1998

Alas, the public library system has failed me. Well, not really. It's just that some requested books are still in transit, so it might be a few more days yet before I receive them. I was doing some non-horsey (even though technically the book has horses in it) extra-curricular reading, but while reading Zorro: A Novel by Isabel Allende, I just caught a pretty strong whiff of the ripe smell of Mary Sue. As it turns out, there's a girl character in the book named Isabel. And I'm gathering that as I progress farther into the novel, she's going to know exactly who Zorro is and is going to use a sword herself, and likely ride by his side to help him fight Eeeeeevil! HA! Don't get me wrong, I adore the story of Zorro -- I'm a California girl, he's like our version of Batman and Robin Hood all rolled up into one -- but I think for the sake of my sanity, I needed to take a very quick respite from the toils of Zorro: A Novel, and do a book review.

I have a confession to make. Are you ready to hear it? Really ready? Well, here goes... I am a lazy ass. I repeat, I am a lazy ass. Instead of making myself do a tough 5 or so minutes of scanning the cover of the copy that I have, did a quick Google search, found that monstrosity, and called it a day. Don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful cover, or it would be, were it not for the fucking huge monstrosity that reads: ASHLEIGH'S THOROUGHBRED COLLECTION. Just clutters the whole thing up. That aside, I'm muchly glad that my copy is from the first printing six years prior to this, and therefore doesn't look like a butt-ugly eyesore. I always liked the balance of color and motion on the page; although I've always wondered where they are, since there's so much space behind them, it's too large for a stall.

Can Susan ever ride again?

Susan has fallen off her horses before. After all, she's been riding since she was young. But this last spill was different. Susan only broke her wrist, but she knows it could have been a lot worse for her or the horse. And it was her own fault. Now, just thinking about riding terrifies her.

Then Evening Star comes to the horse farm where Susan lives. Star's elegant gait and graceful stride show he could become a champion jumper. But he was mistreated by his former owner, and as a result he trust no one in the stable except Susan. Susan knows that only she can make Star a winner, but she also knows that she isn't ready to ride again...

Here we go! The timeless classic tale of a horse-crazy girl who gets badly rattled by a traumatic fall, and it takes a very special horse to help get her back in the saddle. And of course, that horse was mistreated by his past (and I'll raise the ante because you just know he was whipped!) and she has to help him so he can help her. Bully!

So our story begins with Susan walking into the Shadowbrook Farm stable office to collect her hard hat so she can go teach an intermediate jump class. We're then treated to a whole internal monologue about how Susan hates teaching this class because of this totally popular little bitch named Tara Pendleton, who is, I suppose your usual arch-nemesis the likes of Diana Carruthers, and Veronica DiAngelo (y'know, popular, pretty, rich -- maybe -- all the stuff that our valient heroines are not) and how different Susan feels from her because Tara is being treated like a sex object by the boys in their class, and yadda, yadda, blah blah. So off Susan goes to her lesson, maliciously hoping that Tara has caught Dengue Fever or Syphilis, but sucks to be her because Miss Pretty Bitch is just fine.

Now, this always was a perplexing issue for me, but the majority of the students in Susan's intermediate jumping class are all in their teens, thereabouts. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but most teenagers seem to be of the rather competitive nature. To be taught how to jump by a girl the same age as them must really be irritating, yet apparently nobody (not even Tara the Queen Bitch if you're you believe Susan) has possibly whined to any parents who then flip out about a teenager teaching their Pwecious! I mean, yeah, obviously Susan has to help teach lessons, but can't she I dunno, take on leadliners or something? Little short stirrup up/downers. Someone to whom your average 7 year-old can look up to, instead of potentially raising the ire of parents who pay all this money for their kid's riding lessons only to have a girl their own age teaching them. Also, Joanna described Susan's students as having "been jumping for several months" which means they've probably just graduated out of doing trot poles, and threfore shouldn't be considered "intermediate" jumpers. But it's a minor quibble I suppose.

Anyway, Susan rides a green horse named Jocko in her riding lesson. The hell, what is this, karmic retribution or something? Remember the exercise rider in Wonder's Promise? What'd he do, die and be reincarnated as a horse? Now, I've never really seen an instructor in the saddle while on a horse, particularly in a group lesson, and most especially while jumping. I mean, what if some student of hers clips a rail and brings it down? There's a pretty damn obvious reason why instructors are usually ground-bound, which ought to be a no-brainer. But clearly, this reasoning fails Susan, and during the midst of teaching, Tara takes over with her !witty commentary, and this sends Susan into a towering rage that she screams at Tara to "Butt out!" (And this is why 14 year old children should not teach other 14 year old children to ride) and proceeds to demonstrate to the class how incompetent she is jumping a green horse.

Thus Susan breaks her wrist when Jocko goes ape-shit and throws himself head-on at the ring fence. There is much pain, and humiliation when Tara takes charge, and Susan practically wants to die on the spot. And there's much humiliation to follow when Tara manages to get Jocko around the jump course a week later. Susan just about has apoplexy, and bolts for the woods, whereupon she stumbles across a water jump on the rich neighbor's property just in time to see the rich snotty teenage neighbor ride a big gray horse up to the jump. Except the gray horse refuses, and naturally the rider does what she's supposed to do -- give the horse a smack with the crop. He refuses again! So Maxine (the teenage rich snob) smacks him again. Rinse, recycle, repeat. She's just gonna keep flogging him all day (clearly we're treated to Joanna Campbell's personal crusade against horse abuse and whips) because she is Evil and Bad, and therefore pre-disposed to horse abuse because we're supposed to hate her. So finally wearing out her crop leather, Maxine gets the horse over the water jump, and off they go.


A few days later, Susan manages to make it to school, Tara puts on a Fake Sweet Bitch act and humiliates Susan some more in front of her classmates. Susan does this withdrawing act, and just basically shuts down until she gets home where she finds her dad bought the big gray horse that she'd seen Maxine riding. He's four years old, and is a Thoroughbred named Evening Star. And at some point, he jumps out of the pasture, and goes tearing off into the woods where Susan chases after him, and they come across a girl named Whitney Duncan. She catches Star, they take him back to her place and call Susan's parents. And the two girls talk and make friends, and it's all cool and that jazz. So Susan's dad suggests that Susan groom the horse because Star practically wants to crawl in her pocket.

So Susan takes Whitney to school, and Whitney blows off Tara, and hangs with Susan, and gets the whole story of the accident from both Tara and Susan. Susan grooms Evening Star, and fusses over him while Tara goes on and on about how she's going to buy a horse. And then one night, Susan's father tells her that Tara wants to buy Star, so Susan vows not over her dead body, and goes on the horse. It's instant love match, oh yay! And Susan finds out how to help condition Star properly. And it works, and she rides him, and oh yay some more. Tara keep on bragging and bragging about how much Evening Star gives her a hard on even though she hasn't ridden him yet (and that just makes me giggle madly) and when Tara sees Susan on Evening Star, she flips out like ninja and Susan finally manages to find the cajones to stand up to her. Hurrah for Susan!

And with Evil Tara's plans for riding Evening Star like an 1888 Whitechapel whore foiled (because clearly Tara owning Evening Star would be the kiss of death) Susan and Whitney can now begin to focus on their eventing careers. Tara of course, sulks around for a bit, and then gets a hard on for a new horse named Dickens. Whitney cleans out her closet and loads Susan down with clothes, and cuts Susan's hair, and Susan goes to school where everyone practically shits their pants because "Whoa, Susan is like Not a Freak!" and then Whitney bullies Susan into going to the Christmas dance where they actually get Susan to dance with members of the opposite sex. Brilliant!

So along comes Christmas Day, and it snows. So Susan, her parents, and older brother of course hitch a horse up to a sleigh and drive off to the Duncans' home, and then it's back home for Christmas treats for the horses (something that Joanna apparently really likes being as it's appeared in several books by now) and Susan gets a entire new wardrobe of show clothes from her parents. And then after Christmas, Susan teaches a beginner class again, and there's general trashing of how Tara is riding her horse like an 1888 Whitechapel whore, and they talk about her behind her back. Susan manages to jump fences again thanks to Star, and then Whitney invites Susan to some show at Madison Square Gardens.

So off to New York, New York the two girls go, and they meet this cute boy named Ronny who totally loves eventing. So he and Susan chat it up. Some time passes, Susan and Star turn into a team, and then comes the moment when Susan falls off Star doing gymnastics, and she freaks, but one of the assistant trainers on the farm makes her get back in the saddle. Crisis averted. Then the weather turns, and spring arrives and so Susan and Whitney go out on the cross-country course, and return to see Tara throwing a temper tantrum about wanting to go out there too. Whatever!

Eventually, Susan, Whitney and even Pretty Bitch Tara go to a horse show. Tara apprently has a huge case of the "butterflies in the stomach" because she tacks her horse up way early and starts warming him up. Whitney and Susan go off to change and Susan is horrified that she has to strip off her clothes in front of other women (honey, you 'aint got anything those ladies haven't already seen) and as they're warming up, Maxine walks over to confront Susan. Evening Star practically shits his pants thinks he's going to be flogged again. They wait for their rounds in jumping, and Tara has to ride first. She goes clean until the last fence when Dickens pulls the rail, thereby giving our Dynamic Duo the opportunity to discuss her FenceFail. But that's fine because Whitney fucks it up even more and gets two faults. Which leaves it all up to Susan to go clean and win the damn class. Bully! But not before having a near meltdown, and begging her horse to help her, which of course, he does.

Susan and Whitney aim for the Winter Horse trials, and Tara gets a case of sour grapes and bad mouths Susan all over school. And then it's time for the Winter horse Trials, and so far, Susan is ahead after a clean run in cross-country and show jumping. She runs into Ronny again, and goes gaga over him. Susan gets second in her event, and Whitney wins hers. And then three weeks later, Susan and Star win, and the whole family starts thinking they ought to enter Star in Groton Horse Trials, which I always thought was a bit much to expect of a five-year-old horse.

Moving along, our Dynamic Duo lurk around the tack store where they see Tara trying on $300 dress boots, and they talk about her behind her back. But this is clearly OK because they are the Good Girls and Tara's just the Bitch. And thus, as Susan is schooling her horse over the cross-country course, he spooks, throws her and she probably fucks her wrist up again. Ooops. Well, turns out Ms. Maxine was on the other side of the fence screaming hysterically and going postal at her horse, so Star shat his pants again. Anyway, Susan sprains her wrist and can't ride for a month. But clearly something must be done because Groton is coming up.

However! In what shall become a very familiar plot to readers of the Annoying Riding Princess Death Match, Susan proposes that Whitney ride Evening Star at Groton. Or at least ride Star and keep him in training for the month that Susan can't ride. Whitney finally caves in to her bestest friend, and sets to work. Of course, before all this happens, Tara has to gloat to Susan at school about missing any upcoming shows. But naturally, she just happens to be at the stable to see Whitney riding Star, so she has another freak out attack.

School ends, and Susan and Whitney go with their class to some park along the Housatonic River where they go canoing, and Whitney stands up in the canoe, and they tip over. Hooray, wet girls! And Tara just happens to be right there to point and laugh. But at last, they get to Groton, and they settle the horses in. Maxine apparently must have some superior power of telepathy because she waits until Susan, Whitney and their parents are all busy the next morning before going to Tara and asking her if she could take a look at Star. This of course is part of her devious plan to psych out the competition (more than likely completely destroy) because it's something worthy of Brad Townsend's awesomeness. In doing so, Maxine manages to make Star shit his hooves, and whimper like a fucking pussy just by standing in the stall (unless of course she managed to flog him with a whip while Tara's back was turned.)

This of course makes Star a nervous wreck, and he bites Whitney and she cries like a baby, and begs Susan to ride Star instead. Which Susan does, even though she hasn't ridden a horse in a month. And since Joanna already established the fact that Susan and Whitney wear the same size back when Whitney gave Susan all those clothes, they have an easy way of getting riding gear for Susan. And while waiting for her dressage test, Susan swears to Star that she'll pull a Cindy and sleep in his stall to protect him. Which either happens or it doesn't because we time travel to the following day where Susan does well, and they tie with Maxine for first place. Ronny shows up again, and chats with Susan a bit before they go back to the motel, and Susan's wrist is hurting like hell. Whitney feels bad, of course, and gets ice.

The next morning, it's time for the show jumping round, and Susan and Star get a clean round, and then Maxine's horse pulls the very last rail, which means Susan wins Groton for her division, and then passes out cold in front of her parents. And we all live happily ever after.

Points of Interest:

• Susan's father is named Mitch. Naturally this makes me giggle like a maniac because the only Mitch I can associate with the name is my golden boy.

• Double You Tee Eff! Whitney's parents have a BMW and a Jeep Cherokee. Seriously, does Joanna Campbell have stock in Jeep or something?

So anyway, I think I'm finally ready to venture back into the adventures of that masked horseman known as Zorro now. I'll likely regret it though if the Mary Sue-ism gets worse. I heard that the author was supposed to be so good, but between the Sue senorita and the telepathic connection between Diego and Bernardo (I fucking kid you not) it's a bit much to expect. Ah well, c'est la vie!

The Saddle Club weird peripheral book: Just For Girls: Happy Horse Day!

Just For Girls: Happy Horse Day!
Bonnie Bryant
Published: June 1990

I'm jumping straight to the most hilarious and shameful Saddle-Club-related thing that Bonnie Bryant ever penned. It's a short story that was printed with a Fabulous Five short story (another book series for girls, attributed to Betsy Haynes) that was apparently supposed to encourage girls ages 6-11 to buy Jean Naté's children's cosmetic collection, Petite Naté, which is "just for girls" (get it?). It gets better:

Holidays are for good times and parties. But the best times are spent with best friends. The best times are

JUST FOR GIRLS

The Saddle Club
"Happy Horse Day"
Carole, Stevie and Lisa are throwing their own party on New Year's Day--with horses on the guest list! As the horses get groomed for the big event, the girls will be busy getting ready--the JUST FOR GIRLS way!

HAHAHA. I enjoyed the summary so much that I included the following quote about it on the Saddle Club Wikipedia page: "In the story, which is only 20 pages long, the girls plan to have a sleepover and use Jean Naté products, which strains credibility for anyone familiar with Stevie and Carole's personalities."

The actual story is only slightly less hilarious. It's late December, and Stevie's cousin's birthday is coming up. Stevie had a lot of fun buying her cousin a birthday present, because she found some bubble bath she liked so much she bought herself some, too. Oh, squee! Apparently all the horses at Pine Hollow have morphed into registered Thoroughbred racehorses, because Carole says they all have the same birthday: January first. Stevie decides they should have a birthday party for the horses.

That night, the girls have a sleepover at Stevie's house and Carole offers to take the first bath. This sounds like the start of a seedy fanfic. Stevie tells her to try some of her new bubble bath, because "It smells wonderful. It's sort of a light smell, not like a heavy perfume. And look at those neat beads floating in the bottle." I think one of BB's other personalities must have taken over and written this. Carole puts bubble bath in the water, "creating clouds of big, fragrant bubbles. It was warm and relaxing--just what she needed after their vigorous ride. Soon she was clean and sweet-smelling." Seriously, do we even need a recap? I could just stop right here.

When sweet-smelling Carole gets out of the bath, Lisa and Stevie are talking about Pepper, the horse Lisa normally rides. Lisa says he was cranky today; Stevie the Wise and Carole the Fragrant realize he's actually got colic. They run back to Pine Hollow, thereby undoing the effects of Carole's pungent bath. The vet, Judy Barker, says that someone has to watch him all the time, to make sure nothing happens and he doesn't have a bubble-bath-induced seizure.

Naturally, the girls volunteer. Judy thinks Pepper might be about to kick it. Lisa is agonized. Then he gets better by New Year's Day, just in time for the birthday party. Lisa is thrilled. Who'd have guessed?

The girls gussy themselves up for the horse birthday party, because of course before you go to a stable, you should "do something nice for yourself." Lisa shows off her Christmas gift from her aunt: "Shampoo, hair detangler, talc, bubble bath, after-bath splash--the works. Are we ready?" Stevie says they can "all wash our hair and then try new hairdos!" Carole tries the skin lotion, Lisa tries the talc, and Stevie tries the cologne spray. Carole loves having "soft smooth skin--better than horse hair!" This really isn't supposed to be funny at all.

We only hear about the birthday party after it's over and the girls are congratulating themselves over ice cream sundaes. Turns out it was a "smashing success." Pepper was well enough to participate. He had more fun than any of the other horses. He just dived into the water when it was time to bob for apples. He also did well at Musical Water Buckets and got first place in Pin-the-Rider on the Saddle. In Spin the Feedbag, some horse got to nuzzle Garnet, Veronica diAngelo's Arabian mare. Garnet got a horrified look on her face when she had to nuzzle poor old Patch. HUH? Is this all some kind of shared delusion on the part of the Saddle Club? Do Petite Naté products turn your brain into Swiss cheese? These horses make Whirlwind look like a Borg.

And, that's pretty much it. The girls eat some ice cream and reaffirm that the Saddle Club is the best club there is. And apparently, in this book, the most vapid.

Points of Interest:

• The cover art is the art from the first edition of #1 Horse Crazy, with a purple background instead of a pink one. I admit that on the front and back covers, the title is just "Happy Horse Day" with no exclamation mark. But the exclamation mark makes it so much funnier.
  
• By June 1990, the first ten books of The Saddle Club had been published. My guess, though, is that even though these stories were written in the spring, the book and the bath products may not have come out until the holiday season of 1990, which would fit with the New Year's theme.
  
• For some reason Stevie's birthday has magically migrated to August (rather than June, as established by book #6 Dude Ranch), and Carole's has migrated away from December. All it says is that her birthday and Lisa's are "months away," which doesn't make sense unless BB means she's already had her birthday for the year. Then again, Carole's birthday isn't established in canon until book #31 Hayride, long after this one.
  
• Lisa's Lhasa Apso, Dolly, makes an appearance, although not by name and has turned into a "he."
  
• Whichever of BB's personalities wrote this, it must have skimmed through #4 Horse Power, because the story references the time Stevie tried a new hairdo on Lisa and she ended up with "little springy curls." Except Lisa actually ended up with huge boingy curls.
  
• Stevie orders orange sherbert with all-natural strawberry topping, marshmallow topping, whipped topping, and a cherry. Mmm. Maybe she'll get colic next.

And that's about it. Savor this one, because there's no other Saddle Club book that is quite so unintentionally hilarious.

Sunbonnet: Most Scandalous Filly of the Year

Sunbonnet: Filly of the Year
by Barbara van Tuyl
Published: 1973

Given how completely out of nowhere weird and awful A Horse Called Bonnie was, I walked into this installment with markedly less enthusiasm. Although, that could also be because I dislocated my knee yesterday and have been resorted to hobbling around as I wait for normalcy to return. I'm not too enthusiastic about anything right now, mainly because I'd really just like to bend my knee properly without wincing. Naturally, this is where the sudden urge to delve back into Julie and Bonnie's world presented itself. There you have it.

Anyway, this cover is really not normal for this series. Basically, it finally acknowledges that Julie is, in fact, blond. However, it's presenting her as a Barbie here, which is pretty far off the mark, no matter how ditsy she may act in the book. Also, one fact I simply must point out: Bonnie's jockey is black. I think the artist went for mildly tan here. Nice going, cover artist.

Foul Against Bonnie!

Though Sunbonnet (known as Bonnie to her young trainer Julie Jefferson) was favored to win the coveted prize in the famed Bridal Stakes, there was a long stretch duel and a photo finish, with a claim of foul against Bonnie. A vicious jockey and a tragic accident in still another race jeopardize Bonnie's racing career.

Julie finds herself involved in mysterious happenings which not only imperil her horse's life, but which threaten to shock and disrupt the world of thoroughbred racing....

Yeah, this tells you absolutely nothing about the story. It's really very impressive in that regard.

Okay, this book was printed in November 1973. It is important to take note of this, because Secretariat has come and gone by this point (you'll find out why this is important later, promise). The previous book was in 1971, and there's this dedication:

"This book is for Bev and Cindy, who asked, "What happened to Bonnie after that?"

I can only assume, then, that this series was never meant to be a series, and Bev and Cindy must have been really pushy about wanting more books. Only one author answered the call: Barbara van Tuyl. I have decided that Barbara van Tuyl was the talent in this operation, or at least the one who came up with more interesting plotlines (at least, more interesting than throwing your horse into a claimer and then being all shocked and dismayed when the horse is actually, God forbid, CLAIMED), which is a good sign. So I'll say first, before I get into the rest of this, that Sunbonnet: Filly of the Year is much better than A Horse Called Bonnie. In that I will not be screaming nearly as much as I did in the last Bonnie entry.

Okay. The deal is that Bonnie is awesome. She's like a filly version of Man o'War, because her stride is nearly as long. Yes, so she's just trouncing her competition coming up to the Bridal Stakes, but there is this other filly that is nearly as good as her, if not just as good, called Canary Feathers. During the race, some bumping happens, and the jockey of Canary Feathers lodges a complaint that doesn't stand. So Bonnie is the winner and the offended jockey basically says something like "screw this" and makes some empty threat that no one thinks much of. Until the next race, when he decides to pull a Jeremy Rose and starts to beat his horse until it veers across the track and rams straight into Bonnie. Bonnie bobbles around, but won't quit and comes in second. Of course, another complaint later, Bonnie is installed as the winner and the evil jockey gets the boot and a 20 day suspension.

Only the thing is Bonnie has shattered her sesamoid bone in her left leg, basically resulting in the end of her racing career. Or, well, someone says something about her being able to come back in a year or more, but Deepwater Farm won this fantabulous breeding to Greyhill Stud's Bothwell and why not use it, right? So they retire Bonnie and ship her off to Greyhill Stud. This, of course, makes little sense to me because if you don't want to board your mare at the stud of the stallion (and I see no reason why Deepwater Farm, which is apparently something like 5,000 acres and owns another huge farm simply to breed horses, would board any mare anywhere else), all you'd have to do is trailer the mare the day of the appointment, do the whole horse sex thing, shove her back in a trailer, and take her home. It's a two hour drive. I mean, come on. But whatever. Bonnie goes to stay at Greyhill Stud until they, like, get around to breeding her or something ridiculous like that.

Anyway, then Leon Pitt (Bonnie's former trainer from two books ago) comes along and gives Julie a Beagle puppy. So Julie is all overjoyed and names the puppy Nana because it "looks responsible." I have no idea where she gets this idea, but it comes out later that she named it Nana after the dog in Peter Pan. Anyway, Nana pretty much becomes the single catalyst for everything that happens in the rest of the book. Really. Writing a book? What something completely ridiculous to happen or be discovered and you can't figure out how to go about making it work? Give your main character a dog. Seriously.

So anyway, Julie keeps coming over to Greyhill Stud to visit Bonnie and the people at Greyhill are NOT HAPPY that she keeps coming over. They're all, what do you want? all the time and completely do not care that she owns the horse. It's really annoying. Anyway, Julie keeps bringing Nana with her and on one of these visits Nana gets out and proceeds to run away. Julie runs after her and winds up at the stud groom's house. Here we are presented with a completely random conversation that lasts about three chapters between Julie and the eccentric but kind stud groom, Pop. Pop, I guess, was a trainer or something and has this really creepy obsession with his crippled stallion that lives in his backyard. This stallion is chestnut, with "the look of eagles," and is basically Secretariat, only its name is Scotch Tweed, which they shorten to Tweedy. Get it? Subtle, Barbara.

So Tweedy is all crippled because he got caught in the gate during training and injured himself so severely he never got to race. Although we are assured that had he raced he would have been better than Man o'War. Pop is all demoralized because he never got to breed him. So demoralized that he's finally pulled together some more money to buy a nice mare to try him with. Good for him. I guess. Anyway, Julie goes frolicking home and discusses with Monty how crazy everyone is at Greyhill, and he promises to come over with her and check it out. During this trip, Nana again runs off and they chase her into another "barren-mare" barn, where they find all of these five-month foals stabled with their dams. Only the thing is...it's March! Holy crap! So they grab Nana and get the hell out of dodge.

Monty then has to go somewhere because he's a trainer and such, leaving Julie at Deepwater Farm, where she will no doubt get into more trouble. She does this, and goes back to Greyhill to talk to Pop about this whole foal issue. Only when she finally gets there (she has to drive through some back roads because the people at the farm have finally had it and won't let her in) she stumbles through the trees and sees Pop at his place with...Bonnie! Instead of running down there and clocking the crazy asshat in the face, she takes off and goes to see Leon Pitt, who tells her to go back and get Bonnie, like now. He gives her his old trailer and off she goes to get Bonnie.

This is where the real fun starts. She rolls up to the gate of Greyhill Stud, and by this point the guard is about ready to start crying because he's so sick of her. He tells her there's no way she's getting in. He doesn't care who she is or why she's there. Just forget it. So she tells him that she needs to test the intercom in the trailer, so will he kindly step inside. He does, and she locks him in. He flips out because he gets car sick, and starts going on about how she's kidnapped him and how he'll have a heart attack. Julie just keeps telling him that she's not doing anything of the sort and no, he's not going to die. So they're yelling at each other over the intercom and she's driving around like a bat out of hell on the farm, and finally on the way to Pop's house she somehow crashes the trailer. The guard is sure he's going to die of a heart attack, so she climbs back into the trailer and gets him out and he starts going on about his pills that make his heart feel better only they are for his stomach. Julie tells him he probably has an ulcer and they proceed to have this long conversation in which she essentially explains heartburn to him. Yeah...I'm not even making that up. So he's all thrilled that he probably doesn't have a heart condition and promises her that he'll go to the doctor and she gets Nana and continues on to Pop's place after the guard tells her he'll get a tractor to tow the trailer out of the ditch she drove it into.

Yeah...so she goes to Pop's and Nana again goes crazy and tries to bite Pop's new mare, Kimberley Gem. Gem goes nuts and runs off and somehow manages to wedge herself into a cave. Julie somehow gets her out of the cave and back to Pop's house. I really don't know why this was in here, I mean really. So she has this long conversation with Pop about why he's crazy, and he admits the whole thing. That he's all crazy in love with Tweedy and wanted the best for him and has been breeding mares intended for Bothwell to Tweedy instead because Bothwell seemingly out of nowhere started to produce untalented foals and Greyhill Stud decided to breed mares intended for Bothwell to other, better but less expensive, stallions because Bothwell had the highest fee. Why they didn't just jack up the fees on the other stallions and lowered Bothwell's is anyone's guess, but Nicholas Grey (the owner, who sort of has a Brad Townsend quality to him and would probably be really awesome despite his nefariousness) decided he wanted to screw up the racing industry a little and that was that.

So! Julie's all "you bred Bonnie to Tweedy, didn't you?" And Pop admits that he did because he, like, loves Tweedy so much. Julie tells him she understands that love will make a person go a little nuts. (Leon Pitt essentially said that Pop was crazy because he wasn't getting any...and I think I believe that a little more, actually.) Julie and Pop then decide that because Mr. Tolkov is awesome he will hire him on as a stud groom for Leon Pitt, and Pop can quit Greyhill and stop being morally objectionable. Pop is thrilled. They shove Tweedy and Gem in the trailer and go up and get Bonnie. This results in some dramatics between them and the staff at Greyhill, who are like part time bouncers. Only then the guard comes along and says that Julie is great and makes the bouncers let them go. The bouncers are upset about this, because one of them really wanted to slap her around. Especially after she told him he smelled like BO.

We end the book with Pop and Julie driving away from Greyhill, discussing how fantastic Bonnie and Tweedy's foal will be. There's also some indication that the new foal will be named Deerstalker.

• Julie is eighteen and Leon Pitt pretty much starts to berate Monty about why he hasn't asked her to marry him yet. Monty is pretty clear cut about his stance that she's a kid, but no one really believes this. Eighteen is good enough for them, but Monty is not thrilled. Therefore he proceeds to be completely the big brother to Julie for the rest of the book, no matter how often they play flirt. It's a little uncomfortable.

• "Good," said Mr. T, and shook hands warmly and went away to do some millionaire-style business on the phone before post time. See, the humor doesn't fall short in this book. Tolkov is also described in one instance as being "in France, buying something."
  

• Julie keeps saying that they aren't going to retire Bonnie until she wins the Triple Crown, which is weird considering the book starts off in September when Bonnie is three. Monty remarks on this as being an inside joke because Bonnie missed the Triple Crown entirely, but I don't really get it. At all.
  

The next installment is Bonnie and the Haunted Farm, in which the back blurb starts out: "accidents, or evil?" I'm not sure about this, but A Home For Melanie still has not shown up and I need to put more ice on my knee, so I suppose I will do this while Julie Jefferson battles ghosts or something. Should be good times.

Look Out Everyone! Olympic-sized Dreams Coming Through!

High Hurdles #1: Olympic Dreams
By Lauraine Snelling
Publish Date: 1995

As per Sundae's request, I'm going to be tackling The Golden Filly and High Hurdles series by Lauraine Snelling. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to do so since all I had was book #1 of The Golden Filly lot, but since I've discovered that our inter-library loan for the TriCounties does have the books at branch libraries, I've gone ahead and put some on request. Only doing two at a time though because of the loan thing, and how it works (and because they'd think I'd have to pay $25 to replace the effing thing if it gets lost -- it's happened before, true story, and I managed to get out of it by the skin of my teeth because someone realized that "Hey, she checked it in, and it got lost on the way back!" So anyway, I'm just trying to cover my ass, mmkay, and keep the loan books down to a minimum.

Luckily, my local library already had High Hurdles #1 on the shelves so I snagged it today. Now, these books are written by Lauraine Snelling. Who, as I understand it, is quite religious. She looks a bit like Mrs Doubtfire, only with blonder hair, and a bit stouter figure. She's also been quoted in her FAQs as saying that Christian writers have a special gift because of the Holy Spirit, and blah blah blah .. something more meaningful.. yadda yadda. (I guess that means atheist writers are just shit out of luck or something.) I think The Golden Filly series is really a lot more about God and religion than High Hurdles seems to be. High Hurdles is more about relationships, since the only really churchy person I can think of in the books is DJ's grandmother, whereas Tricia spends half her time in The Race having a 'Come to Jesus' moment. My gut feeling is, because the High Hurdles books were written a number of years after The Race, Lauraine decided to focus more on DJ's relationships with her friends and family rather than making the Christian thing point and center.

Thirteen-year old DJ Randall wants nothing more than to compete as a show jumper in the Olympics. After years of riding and working with horses, she’s ready to start contending. Only once obstacle stands in her way—she doesn’t have a horse!

Together with her best friend, Amy Yamamoto, DJ puts her plan for earning horse money into action. But just when it seems as if buying a horse is a real possibility, everything goes wrong. DJ’s grandmother, who has always lived with DJ and her fast-track mother, announces she is moving out.

Horrified at the prospect of living alone with a mother who doesn’t understand her dreams, DJ fights to prevent the move. Without Gran’s support, DJ may never realize her Olympic ambitions!

All DJ needs is a chance…

Look, look right there at the synposis. I mean, wow... there's not even any mention of any Higher Power (namely God) anywhere in the entire thing. It's almost like The Race couldn't wait to throw out any messages from the Divine, but Olympic Dreams focuses instead on the tale of DJ's woefully inadequate life because she doesn't have a horse, and can't be in the Olympics then. Look, DJ honey, I don't know if anyone's told you, but you're probably better off getting a rich sugar daddy sponsor and doing what 3/4ths of the Olympic equestrian teams do and ride someone else's horse.

Nonetheless, we must begin our story with DJ's dream. To ride in the freaking Olympic games, whoohoo! DJ (Darla Jean -- I can see why she has a nickname) is sitting in her room, oogling a poster of a jumping horse. It's her dream to be the rider on that horse, and she's thirteen years old, with a birthday coming up. And as it turns out, she's gotten distracted by the poster because she leaves her best friend, Amy Yamamoto, waiting downstairs for quite some time -- and she's got a lesson to teach in a half hour. Yikes! The girls have to fly! Well, bike really really fast anyway. But that doesn't stop them from talking about how much DJ wants her a horse of her own. The thing I really have to admire about DJ is that she says straight up that her mother can't afford lessons, but instead of being one of those spoiled whiny little asshat kids (like say, Nickie the Whiny Baby) who throw shitfits about not getting riding lessons, DJ goes out and trades work for lessons at Briones Riding Academy all on her own. She just comes across as more self-sufficient compared to other adolescents in most horse books, and as such, her whinging about how she doesn't have a horse of her own can mostly be forgiven. So once they arrive at the Academy, DJ goes for some lovin with her favorite horse, a sorrel gelding named Diablo. See, Diablo has these owners -- yeah, the absentee kind who seem fully willing to pour hundreds of dollars into care for an animal but never seem to show up and get on its back. Sheesh, people, just buy Breyer models or something!

DJ has a group of beginner riders; two little girls, plus one that has asthma, so she misses the lesson that day. And they're only a few years younger than her -- it just rubs salt into the wound that they have their own horses. But nonetheless, DJ bucks her chin up, and buckles down for a snazzy good lesson with Diablo, the Appendix Quarter Horse Wonder. And it just gets better because DJ wants to learn how to jump, and Bridget, the barn manager/trainer/owner-whatever says she's only been waiting for DJ to ask, and offers to let her ride some old jumper. And then James, Mr. Spoiled Rich Kid with the Super Pretty Arabian Filly shows up, and DJ has some bad thoughts about him -- mainly along the lines that he's a stuck up little prick who needs to be strangled and buried in a hole.

And then it's off for home after cleaning the tack, and DJ solicits her grandmother for money for the entry fees. DJ's grandmother is really how I see my grandparents; loving, caring wonderful people who care deeply for their grandchildren. That they happen to be fervently religious is just a facet of who they are, and they don't push their beliefs off on their grandkids (it's like they understand my inability to sit still in a church and so are more than willing to let me stay home when we go visit them.) Anyway, DJ's Gran is just like that. She gives DJ the money she needs, and DJ skips off to her room to draw pictures of horses, happy as a lark.

But her world trembles the next day as she arrives at the Academy and finds Diablo's stall gate open, and the stall empty. Oh noes! Luckily, she runs into Bridget's office and before she can work up a really good cry, Bridget tells her that Diablo's owners came and took him away, post haste because they were moving. Of course, Bridget's not too happy about it herself since she didn't get her 30 days notice, but she gives DJ an envelop from the owners. Inside is $100 which while not loads of cash, is certainly enough to help DJ towards her horse fund. Come to think of it, if only DJ was looking for a horse 13 years after 1995, she'd probably have enough right there to buy at least half of one, if not more, considering the horse market these days. And i really have to hand it to her, she's pretty emotionally bummed out about Diablo being gone, but she gets her act together, and gets ready for her jumping lesson.

And amazingly, she doesn't turn into a star jumper in just one lesson; she miscounts strides, she gets left behind, she uses too much leg, but hey, she gets her act together and rides a decent fence which is enough to satisfy her trainer. And then she gets to work c leaning stalls before going home. Right when her mother gets home, and practically runs over her bike. Ooops. But, Lindy has the grace to apologize, and DJ gets to pour her pity parade out to her mother about Diablo moving away. Of course, it's just not enough to make her mother actually go out and buy a horse, sure she sympathizes, but hey, what's she gonna do. So things get a little heated between DJ and her mom, and Lindy actually flounces out of the room in a huff. And DJ of course has to inadvertently eavesdrop on her mother and grandmother talking about her, but then it gets too quiet, so she wanders back to her room.

I'm giving DJ some more credit, but she does try to make the next morning a better day. I know she probably thinks life is pretty crappy, but she throws herself into a nice hour long lesson, and even comes up with this idea of pony rides at birthday parties as a way of making money. What she and Amy will do is borrow a pony from the stables, lead them around, and Amy could take pictures of them. What a plan! They'll be rolling in dough before you know it! In the mean time, DJ's birthday arrives, and there's a birthday party for her in the tack room, and she sees candles, and something in her brain snaps and she remembers a terrible fire she experienced as a little kid. Yeah, apparently flames are a no-go for this kid, she's go primal or something. And DJ's mom shows she's not that big of a grouch because she and Gran buy DJ a nice show outfit for her birthday. But of course, Lindy drops a hint that she's trying to get her mother matched up with a policeman. Which makes DJ uneasy for some reason.

Moving along, DJ, Amy and DJ's students go for a trail ride in Briones State Park. Now, I did some looking, and couldn't find a Briones State Park, but I found a Briones Regional Park and the place sounds positively gorgeous. Someday, when I have a trailer, I think Mitch and I will take a ride up there. It's around his old stomping grounds, when he used to be a carriage horse for Fancy Ferriage. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he hadn't pulled a wedding carriage in the area. DJ amuses me in that she has a beesting kit in her saddle bags. After I was stung 30 times on a horse camping trip last summer, I took to carrying an EpiPen just in case. Also, DJ reminds me of me; toting around an emergency kit and all. Only, I keep my stuff in a fanny pack on me. Just in case. Thus, everyone has a nice ride, and everyone is happy.

There's a horse show a few days later, and DJ runs around helping people while feeling just a little bit sorry for herself that she doesn't have a horse to ride. Gray Bar, Jame's gray Arabian filly, goes batshit loading (thank you Jeebsus that my horse is an easy loader!) and thus she goes batshit again in the ring, and James is a prick and blames DJ for it. Asshole! DJ keeps herself busy and thus doesn't actually miss riding in the show as much as the thought.

And the next day, DAj and Amy have the first of their pony birthday parties. Unfortunately, they don't become instant millionaires overnight, and it's hardly a rousing success because a little boy tries to feed Bandit a pink flower, a little girl goes postal about wearing the cowboy hat and the pony takes a shit in the driveway. And just when they're about to clean up the manure, the mother of the birthday child shows up and announces cake and ice cream, which starts the mad rush for the house. And get this, three -- not just one -- three children step squish squish into horseshit and run into a house with white carpet. Mother freaks. Yeah, well, listen lady, you have a child, white carpets should have been the least of your concern. Luckily for Amy and DJ, they still get paid, and it's time to bring Bandit home so DJ can hustle her butt back to her house for the dinner with the copper. Who turns out not to be too bad for an old guy. And the best part is, he's got a horse. A horse named Major. But then what turns out to be bad about him is that Gran seems to really really and I mean really like him. Doh!

this really peeves DJ off. I mean, how dare her widowed grandmother who has spent the last decade caring for her, fall head over heels in love with a man. It's positively obscene! And it gets worse the next day because they're already going out on dates even though they've only met each other a few hours earlier. And DJ gets accused of stealing a bridle and a saddle, so she flips out like ninja. The pony party seems to go better this time, and the girls even get lemonade. And when DJ gets home, she finds out her grandmother clearly is so lovesick, she doesn't even pay attention when DJ says she slapped some little kid upside the head. Clearly, Gran is coming down with the LoveBug Fever and doesn't give a shit about anything else. Crikey!

DJ evenbtually runs into James. Turns out, he's the one that said she stole the tack. So she threatens to cut the bitch. Unfortunately, Bridget finds them in a stall, and puts both of them on probation. This doesn't help DJ much because she's already had a fight with her mom that was probably nearly homicidal, and her grandmother keeps dating the policeman. DJ goes home, sulks, and finally has a Come to Jesus moment, which is the first time it's happened (and it's page 101) which is a vastly different scenario to Tricia who can't seem to stop her prayerfests long enough to take a breath. And she goes to bed feeling sorry for herself.

Things just don't get better the next day because Meg comes up lame, so she can't have her jumping lesson, and their pony parties all get canceled because of chicken pox. And DJ has to go to a barbecue at Joe the Policeman's house, where she meets his kids and grandkids. And then holy shit, but Gran just about shatters her world because Joe has a big announcement to make ... that he and Gran are gonna tie the knot. NOOOOO! Say it isn't soooooo! DJ is so heartbroken by this, she up and leaves the party, forcing her mother to come chasing after her in the car. DJ's mom lays the smackdown on her, no teaching lessons and no riding for pleasure for two whole weeks. But DJ still has to go to her job and clean tack and muck stalls. And Gran and Joe call the wedding off, which serves to infuriate Lindy. Well, shit!

DJ feels like shit, and so she wakes up in the middle of the night and contemplates runningoff with her life saving of $382. But before she can do that, she has to go to work at the Academy. She workrides a new horse named Patches and leaves Bridget a note. She then goes and gets all her money out of the bank, and prepares to run off. But before she leaves entirely, she goes back to the Academy to say goodbye to some horses and runs into James. James' life isn't hunky-dory either, sure his parents are rich, but his mom's an absentee mother and his dad is a drunkard. And they want to ship him off to military school because Daddy Dear thinks James needs "discipline" so he's pretty bummed about that because he can't see his horse. And worse, his father's going to sell her! Oh noes! And James finally confesses that he's just jealous of DJ and he hid the saddle, and all that shit. Well, at least they seem to be friends now.

DJ goes home, and her mother finds her with a sleeping bag and a backpack full of her world goods. Oh great, she's gonna get the smackdown now. But yeah, anyway, Gran's still going to marry Joe, and they're buying a house right near the Academy. Bridget grounds DJ from riding period for a month, but says she'll give her plenty of other work. James tells DJ they're not selling Gray Bar, but that she's going with him to the military school. DJ goes to the wedding and afterwards Joe tells DJ that since he's retiring, the horse he rides on patrol is also retiring, and that he'll sell him to DJ for $400 so she'll finally have her own horse. Hooray!

I don't think there's a lot of points of interest for this book. At least, I didn't pick up anything while reading that seemed particularly noteworthy.

So, that was Book #1 of the High Hurdles series. Like I said before, the God thing really got toned down from the Golden Filly series. Don't get me wrong, it's still there, but not so in your face preachy-like. DJ only prays to go maybe twice, and both times they come pretty late in the book. Earlier I compared Gran to my own religious grandparents, and she seems to always be reading a Bible, but she doesn't stand there preaching at anyone. Even when her own daughter starts screeching that she doesn't want to be preached at, Gran didn't come across as a religious fanatic or anything like that. I think it added it's share of layers to the relationships in the book, and really, it was an enjoyable read without coming across as some kind of Christian doctrine in disguise. Book #2 is on request, so hopefully I'll get that within a day or two. But for right now, I think I'm going to take advantage of the fact that I requested some other books from the library, and get some non-horsey reading in.

Time for a Little Cross-Dressing Fun So She Can Race Her Dreams

To Race A Dream
By Deborah Savage
Published 1994

So believe it or not, this isn’t a book from my childhood, and although its publishing date roughly fits the time when I was deeply engrossed in the Saddle Club world and enjoying Thoroughbred dreams, I never read this one. Maybe it’s because I never knew it existed, at least not until now. A few weeks ago, I was at the public library for the first time in a dog’s age. And stumbled across this book on the spinning rack of paperbacks, and figured “What the hell.” Before I begin though, I really have to inform readers of this blog that this book was written by some chick who was like the great-granddaughter of M.W. Savage – so it’s no wonder that Mr. Savage amounts pretty much to Godhood here. Granted, he might have been a very generous person, and I suppose his descendants would have known about him best, but holy shit, the man can literally do no wrong within these pages, and is probably more saintly than Jesus Christ. Un-believe-able!

He was the fastest horse on earth… and she would so anything to race him.

Theo has a secret dream – to be a great jockey. But in 1906, the very idea of a girl racing horses is unthinkable. Theo’s parents would never allow it.

Then Theo’s sister, Claudia, becomes very ill. With her family distracted, Theo seizes her chance. She passes herself off as a boy and gets a job on the neighboring horse farm. Soon she is given the opportunity of a lifetime: to drive the best race horses in the country—including the legendary Dan Patch, a magnificent stallion who has broken the world record for harness racing.

In order to live out her dreams, Theo will have to live a lie. But how long can she keep pretending.

How … National Velvet-ish. Girl passes herself off as a boy to work with horses. And apparently almost everyone around her is too fucking dumb to figure it out. Sweet! And I really think that the use of the phrase “to be a great jockey” is something of a misnomer. Jockey would imply that one rides a horse, although the dictionary does indicate that one could drive a horse. However, I’d imagine that the harness would want to make a very clear distinction that they are drivers as opposed to jockeys. Perhaps it’s splitting hairs, and maybe “to be a great jockey” sounded better than “to be a great driver” but it’s like apples and oranges. Or maybe I’m just too picky.

Needless to say, our story begins at the turn of the 20th Century (give or take a few years) with our disgruntled heroine, Theodora, bitching about the unfairness of life as she traipses off into the Minnesota countryside. It seems that life is unfair because Theodora (I fucking hate her fucking nickname of ‘Theo”) has this dream; as dream of horses and harness racing and getting to invade that hallowed sanctum of the International Stock Feed Farm. You see, the International Stock Feed Farm was a big deal for this little Minnesota town that used to be called Hamilton. But then a rich dude by the name of Marion Willis Savage bought a horse, and that horse made history, and everyone in the town decided to orally pleasure the guy (in the figurative sense) and rename the whole blooming town after him. And it’s Theodora’s dream to get to this wonderful farm, and see the place for herself. That, and drive the harness horses.

But anyway, life just isn’t fair, according to her. As it turns out, she was going to visit the farm on the last day of school, and why she’d even get to win this thing called The English Prize (which is I guess some medal for being able to write a good story in English class) but now it’s all going to pot because of Claudia, her older sister. Theodora’s family is not your normal family of the early 1900s. Her mother, Maude is a suffragist, her father, Stevenson, is a lawyer who’s apparently big on equal rights for women, and her sister is an alternate on some big orchestra thing. And because her sister has these big dreams and goals and this whole thing about standing up to men in her own right, and all Theodora wants is horses (which you know is only supposed to last until she discovers boys) she is clearly not the apple of her mama’s eye. And what luck! Somehow, two violinists get sick right at the same time (gee, something they both ate perhaps?) and it seems that Claudia is the only one capable of playing in an upcoming concert. So instead of going to the farm of her dreams and getting the medal for writing, Theodora is bustled off to Minneapolis with her parents to watch her sister perform.

But not before she wishes something truly heinous would happen to Claudia, and wouldn’t you just know it, but after playing amazingly well, Claudia collapses during the concert. And we find that she has polio. Polio is bad juju because the cure for this disease wouldn’t be found for another 82 years, which means Claudia is pretty much screwed. Her parents bring her home, and Theodora’s aunt, Harriet, arrives. Harriet is a doctor, and so she settles in with the family to help take care of Claudia.

Most importantly, because Aunt Harriet isn’t sure if polio is contagious or not, the family pretty much kicks Theodora out of the house during the day, and she’s left to her own devices. While at the general store with her aunt, she runs into Marion Willis Savage, and goes all fangirl on him, and begs him to help get sheepskins for her sister to lie on. He’s nice (c’mon, the bloody book’s written by his great-granddaughter, as if she’d say anything bad about the guy who made the money in her family, pssh!) and says he’ll help. And Theodora practically pisses her pants with joy. And this makes her more determined than ever to be with the horses. Thus, she enlists the help of a schoolmate, a Swedish boy named Carl. Carl is sixteen, so a year older than Theodora, and his family is a big family of poor farmers with bad English skills. That’s not to demean them in anyway, mind you, but it does show the hardship that immigrant families face, especially back in the early days of the Industrial Revolution. Carl is smart, Carl wants to be something in life, and Carl wants books. Theodora gives Carl books to read, and then pretty much blackmails him with her dreams – and he helps her get some clothes so she looks like a boy, and off she goes to the International Stock Feed Farm to work as a stablehand running water buckets and cleaning. But what she really wants to do is work with the horses.

Now, Theodora’s matter of disguising herself is to dress up in boy’s clothes, and pin her long hair up under a cap. That’s so so bloody cliché. At least Velvet Brown has the sense to actually cut her hair off, but Theodora only pins it up under a cap. And despite the fact that she’s running around doing any number of chores, including ones that surely must involve bending down to pick something up, her cap never ever falls off her saintly little head. Which begs the question of what kind of a cap is she wearing? Because surely someone would notice that her hat does not sit down firmly on her head, but seems to be held aloft a few inches by the mass of hair underneath it. But they don’t, which means all the men are stupid, and she is smart. Girl power, and all that tripe.

Well, almost all the men, because there’s this old rat-catcher guy who figures out she’s a girl before she even opens her mouth (maybe it’s the way she walks or something) but Carl takes her to see Dan Patch because of the obsessive way that Theodora lusts after the stallion, and she gets to feed him apples, and M.W. Savage asks her name, and she’s a dope and calls herself Theodore Stevens. Which is dumb because her knows her father, and saw her at the general store. So anyway, the long and the short of it is that she keeps working at the farm all day, and then goes home, and sees her sister lying motionless in bed. And tries to give her some water, and succeeds only in soaking her sister, Maude freaks out and Theodora screams at her aunt for coming there and ruining the whole family while her mother screams at her (ah, such familial bliss!)

And it just gets better because Theodora meets up with Carl the next day, and they talk about families, and Carl being observant for a boy, notes that there’s some weird tension between Maude, Stevenson and Harriet when they’re all in a room together. And they go their separate ways when they get to the farm. There, the old rat-catcher guy, Amon Szabo, takes Theodora to the track just when it starts to rain and one of the young horses spooks, and his driver falls out of the sulky. Theodora jumps (I kid you not) into the seat, and grabs the reins. And then there’s this whole mumbo jumbo thing about how she calls out some secret name and the horse stops and everyone shits their pants at how amazing she is, even M.W. Savage. And then it starts to really rain, and Carl and Theodora take refuge in the barn. Only, Theodora hid her clothes by the creek, and when they get there, everything got washed away. Ooops.

Thus chastened, she has to return home, where her mother finds out she’s been masquerading as a boy to work at the horse farm and practically flies into a homicidal rage because damn it, they’ve given her everything so she can be an intelligent, smart young woman with a future and there she is wasting it on horses. Plus, like dude, she’s totally going to ruin the future of the world for women like me and many readers of this blog, by pretending to be a boy. Gasp! So Theodora screams at her mother, her mother screams back, and everyone is unhappy.

And in the midst of this, Carl and his father, Gustav show up. Gustav has found the books that Theodora and her family have lent to Carl, and he thought that Carl stole them. There’s more yelling and fighting, and finally Stevenson convinces Gustav to let Carl go back to school, and gives him another book to read. Only this book is On the Origin of Species, which has always been rather confrontational in terms of religion, even now. And Gustav is like uber-religious. So there’s obviously some forcing his hand there. Bully!

Carl asks Theodora to come to the dance on the Fourth of July, and this leads to the conversation between Aunt Harriet and Theodora about how Harriet had the hots for this guy, and he had similar feelings and proposed to her. But oh no, Harriet has to be a doctor, and there's no way she could possibly be a wife and a mother at the same time because she's got this driven goal of women's rights, and producing children would just discredit her in the world. Anyway, she never says her beau's name, and says that Claudia has to make the same kind of decision ... but oh, she wants to do Theodora's hair for the dance, so that Carl sees her as a young woman. Talk about mixed messages there, Harriet. Honestly!

Theodora does go back to the farm, but she doesn't have to hide her dress anymore because she can leave the house wearing Carl's old clothes. And M.W. Savage says he's going to turn her over to this guy named Bill Turner who can teach her to drive harness horses. But not until after the Fourth of July parade. And then comes the parade, and Gustav brings his wagon to take Claudia, and Carl sits next to Claudia and pays a lot of attention to her, and Theodora practically gnaws her own liver in jealousy. And along comes Dan Patch being driven in the parade, and he remembers her from when she fed him apples, so he practically drools all over her, which gives Mr. Savage a chance to get a really good look at Theodora all dressed up. Oh, and Carl's like totally hiding behind Theodora, just so Mr. Savage won't put two and two together.

It's time for the dance, and Theodora wears a dress her mother wore when she met Stevenson. And Maude, and Harriet and Stevenson all sigh and awwwh over her. And Maude has a headache, but insists that Harriet go with Stevenson to the dance. And there's Carl, and Amelia, the rich banker's daughter is a bitch, and Carl brushes her off. Theodora dances with Carl, and he kisses her. And then she looks at her father, her aunt and her mother on the front porch, and the whole thing hits her like a clue-by-four. Yay! Love triangle!

So Theodora gives Carl a story to read, and then she goes to work with Bill Turner who must be this book's version of crusty old Charlie Burke because he's not talkative, stout, and really old. And he teaches Theodora how to drive this horse named Brown City Lad. And times goes by, and Claudia starts to get better. And she even can sort of walk one day. And Theodora gets pissy at Aunt Harriet again, and screams to her mother how much she hates her, and confronts her about the whole thing between Harriet and Stevenson. Hurrah! And Mumsy Maude doesn't even deny it. Even better!

So anyway, the next day, Carl tells her that he's turning in his notice and won't be working at the farm. Which means that it's her last day there too. And with the help of Amon Szabo, along with a loose stallion, she gets into the sulky pulled by Dan Patch and drives him. Yeah, she just freaking gets in when everyone is busy, and drives the famous race horse. And nobody gets mad afterwards because Mr. Savage tells her he knew she was a girl ever since the day of the parade. So that's the end of Theodora's working at the farm, because she has to quit anyway, and did it with a bang.

And finally, they go to the Minnesota State Fair. Theodora received tickets from Mr. Savage to sit in the grandstands and watch Dan Patch's race. And so her father, Claudia and Carl all get to go along. And Carl told Theodora that he copied the story she gave him, and sent it in to these publisher people who now want her name so they can publish it. And he kisses her again, which makes her older sister and father act and look interested in something else (hahaha) and it's off to the Fair.

At the Fair, they find their seats, and watch as Dan Patch's pacer horses come out onto the track. And there's the big horse himself. And off he goes, pacing along until he breaks his own record, trotting a mile in 1:55. And Theodora is happy, and everyone lives happily ever after.

However, as an interesting side note, that day that Dan Patch trotted a mile in 1:55, the time was record was made unofficial due to the use of a dirt shield by his prompter. Deborah Savage seems to build up the suspense of how amazing this horse was by adding in an afterward that the record was not broken for 20 years. However, perhaps it might have served her better to acknowledge that the record of 1:55 for the mile was unofficial. Otherwise, it just makes the book more fictional than it was by twisting the truth.

Points of Interest:

• Theodora's mother is an odd bat. She continually tells her daughter not to mess up her clothes, however while she's inside her house, she wears her husband's clothes. Does this not contradict her near-homicidal rage when she finds out that Theodora has been wearing Carl's clothes?

• Deborah Savage likes to use the word "man's" to indicate clothing and things that women should not be using. For example, she states that Aunt Harriet was carrying a long man's umbrella tucked her her arm. For god's sake, just say it's a long black umbrella. It's not like anyone would mistake it for a frilly parasol!

• Theodora is stating a new story about a boy with blonde hair and blue eyes and was from Norway, and was adopted by Indians. Holy moly, she turned Carl into a Larry Stu!

• Also, Theodora is dumb as rocks. For someone who likes horses as much as she does, mustangs do not win the freaking Kentucky Derby.

So that's To Race A Dream. And I can't get this thing back to the library fast enough. I'll have to see what else there is to read. I've put book #2 of the Golden Filly series on request for an inter-library loan and it's on its way.