Saddle up for great riding -- yes indeed, the horse-craziest riding ever -- with the girls of Pine Hollow!

Hello, everyone! Mara invited me to contribute to this blog because she knows that I've been a fan of Bonnie Bryant's horse books (The Saddle Club, Pony Tails, Pine Hollow) for much longer than I read the Thoroughbred books -- I even have eight versions of Horse Crazy to prove it. (And yes, we'll get to my weird thing with the editions of the books soon.)

I'm starting with the first book in The Saddle Club series, even though I've told Mara it'll be harder for me to snark the first thirty books or so, the ones I read for the first time while I was still a kid. Can we jump to #51 after this, please?

A little bit of background: Bonnie Bryant was born and raised in New York City, but moved to Wisconsin for college, where she met her husband, Neil W. Hiller. They married and had two sons, Emmons and Andy. Neil Hiller died in 1989.

Much like other children's series, an editor at Bantam Books came up with the idea for the books because "she knew there were a lot of horse-crazy readers who hadn't had any new books in a long time. She also knew how interested I [Bryant] was in horses." Bryant, who had written about twenty books at the time, including several youth novelizations, got the job. The editor who suggested the series was named Judy, and the character of Judy Barker in the books is named for her. Like The Baby-Sitters Club, only four books were planned originally. (This information all comes from the About the Authors and the Saddle Club newsletters, which of course I got as a kid.)

The first Saddle Club book was published in October 1988. Different types of books and spin-off series followed (the first Super Edition in 1994, the first Pony Tails book in 1995, the first Pine Hollow book in 1998, the first Inside Story in 1999) until the series closed with Saddle Club #101 Best Friends in November 2001. Canonically, Pine Hollow #17 is the last book in the Willow-Creek-verse.

So! The summary:

Twelve-year-olds Carole Hanson and Stevie Lake have been best friends ever since they met at Pine Hollow Stables. So when thirteen-year-old Lisa Atwood shows up for her first lesson dressed in fancy riding gear--and acting chummy with the snobbiest girl in town--the girls aren't sure she'll fit in. But Lisa soon shows herself to be a quick learner, and Carole and Stevie can't help but admire her natural riding talents. Soon the three girls are fast friends.

Over sundaes at their favorite ice cream shop, the girls begin to make plans for the MTO, the long-awaited Mountain Trail Overnight campout for the students of Pine Hollow. There's just one problem: Stevie's parents won't pay for it unless she improves her grades. There's no way Stevie will miss out on this wonderful trip with her friends, so she decides to start her own business--with a little help from a surprising source!

Okay, I know I said this was going to be hard to snark, but this summary suffers from a case of way too much, too soon.

It's Saturday. We meet Stevie, who is a lazy, mischievous (but not unintelligent) student and has a cat named Madonna. (It was the 80s, remember.) Stevie is bummed because her parents won't pay for her to go on the MTO unless she improves her grades -- so naturally, the obvious solution here is not to improve her grades, but rather to earn $50 to pay for the trip herself!

We meet Carole, who is hanging out at Pine Hollow because her father, a Marine Corps colonel, had to drop her off on the way to Quantico. Carole is twelve years old and slender -- oh, wait, until the first reprint, in which she becomes slender and African-American. Seriously, look at that cover. Does she look overtly African-American to you? Frankly, she always looked more Mediterranean to me.

Anyway, Carole is cleaning tack because Max, the stableowner, pretends that he wants to teach his students the value of hard work, but really is just too lazy to hire more than one stablehand. We find out that Carole's mother died six months earlier from cancer.

We meet Lisa, who is decked out like she's Michelle Tanner on the last episode of Full House. Mrs. Atwood brags to Max about what a great rider Lisa is. Max knows Mrs. Atwood is full of it, but smiles and nods and introduces Carole to Lisa, saying that they'll be in the same class since they're past the introductory level and will be grouped by age rather than skill. That's probably true to some extent, but it's still an awfully convenient plot point. Max puts Lisa on a horse named Patch and everything's going great until a girl -- dun dun DUN! -- comes into the ring and lets the door slam. This freaks out Patch, who is apparently the perfect horse for beginners except that he spooks at sudden loud noises, bright sounds, or a combination of both. He takes off, but Lisa manages to get him under control and not fall in the process.

We meet Veronica diAngelo, an attractive, obnoxious snob who owns a beautiful coal-black (naturally) stallion (naturally). I guess it's supposed to sound really impressive to the eight-year-old reader that Veronica owns this gorgeous stallion, but really, no? Max does say in the next book that he "never approved" of Mr. diAngelo buying a stallion for Veronica, but nowhere does he say that he told him, "Are you crazy? What would a twelve-year-old girl who rides at a stableful of mares and geldings need with an expensive stallion?"

Carole shows Lisa how to tack up a horse, while Stevie gets Patch ready for Lisa to ride in class -- except, they left the tack on him, so what does Stevie need to do? Oh, yes, she needs to welcome Lisa to Pine Hollow by leaving the stirrups off her saddle. Lisa gets back at Stevie after class when she ties knots in the laces of Steve's sneakers after class. She figures it's fair revenge for Stevie slamming the door and leaving the stirrups off her horse. Needless to say, Stevie and Lisa are not friends at the end of this chapter.

Lisa wants to quit riding, but her mother won't listen to her. She is way too focused on the fact that Max is a "dear" and the horses are "so nice" and that Veronica is in Lisa's riding class, so Lisa should be her friend.

Carole and Stevie go to the shopping center after class. Carole tells Stevie about the way Lisa stayed on Patch after someone slammed a door, Stevie puts up a notice saying she'll do odd jobs, Carole buys a tape for her father, and Stevie enters a contest for a trip to Hawaii.

Tuesday. Lisa asks Veronica to help her tack up Patch, but Veronica, instead, calls for Red. He's about twenty and apparently the only stablehand Max can afford to employ. We keep hearing about how he's the "head" stablehand, but there never seems to be anyone else for him to be the "head" of. Red is surprised that Lisa wants to learn to tack up a horse herself.

During class, Lisa doesn't like the idea of using a whip on Pepper, but Max assures her "that it didn't hurt the horse. He told her that a whip should be used to reinforce an instruction the horse already knew he was supposed to follow." That's more like it! None of this "my Thoroughbreds are too sensitive for whips" type stuff. Veronica invites Lisa over to her house on Saturday. Lisa, polite/clueless person she is, says yes.

Saturday. After riding class, Veronica's mother picks up the girls in her Mercedes. Veronica jumps in the front, leaving Lisa to sit in the back with the diAngelos' two muddy Labrador retrievers. This is more characterization than Veronica's mother gets throughout the entire rest of the series. The diAngelos live in a big, beautiful, three-story colonial house, with a two-story portico, two wings, acres of grass, landscaped grounds, a swimming pool, a guest house, a maid, a gardener, and a chauffeur. It's kind of like the Fowler mansion, Virginia-style. Veronica and Lisa do fun things like eat a maid-delivered snack in Veronica's room, go swimming, and eat sausage pizza. Man, there was a time when I loved sausage on my pizza. It was probably around the same time that I was reading The Saddle Club. The whole thing wouldn't be too bad, except that Veronica orders Lisa around all day. Lisa has enough when Veronica tries to make her watch a horror movie.

Saturday night. Carole and her dad watch Casablanca on TV. This is the first in a long line of old classic movies that Carole and her dad like, including Sands of Iwo Jima, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, King Kong, and anything involving Humphrey Bogart. When I was little, I thought these were totally normal movies for twelve-year-old girls to watch, and I went around embarrassing myself by using quotes like "Play it again, Sam!" improperly.

Still Saturday night. Stevie gets a job offer. She's not excited about raking hedges until the woman says she'll pay $2.50 an hour. (Definitely the 80s.) Stevie is way too busy answering the telephone to actually do any work, so all weekend, she gives all the jobs to her three brothers (Michael, 9; Alex, her twin; and Chad, 14).

Monday. Carole goes to Pine Hollow to exercise Cobalt, Veronica's overgrown kitten in a stallion disguise. Seriously, this horse makes Storm's Ransom look like a jaguar. He nickers, nuzzles her shoulder, has a nice soft mouth, responds to just the pressure of her legs on his sides, never tries to take the bit, never gets fussy, and never begs for a sugar lump. Except he's also supposed to be really high-strung, powerful, competitive, and take-charge. Ooookay. It's hard to be really cynical about this, because Carole loves this horse to pieces. As with most things people love to pieces, things will not end well for Cobalt.

Saturday. After riding class, Veronica comes to spend the afternoon at Lisa's house. BB doesn't go into a lot of details, and this scene is still so genuinely uncomfortable that I cringe on Lisa's behalf. It's like when you're in junior high, which Lisa is, and you hang out with the popular girls because your parents want you to be in the "in" crowd, and you have absolutely nothing in common and they spend the entire time looking at you like you have a booger on your shirt. They make you feel stupid, not because of anything they say to you, but the things they talk about with each other make it clear that you are so not cool. Yeah.

Meanwhile, Stevie dispenses more odd jobs to her brothers, classmates, and friends.

Tuesday. (If you're keeping track, two weeks and three days have passed since the start of the book.) Before class, Lisa overhears Carole and Veronica talking in the next stall. Veronica implies that if Carole tells Max that Veronica -- not Stevie -- was the person who slammed the door when Lisa was riding Patch, she won't let Carole ride Cobalt anymore. This is actually pretty serious blackmail of the twelve-year-old degree. Also, stables make awfully convenient places to overhear conversations. Lisa accuses Carole of lying to her and explains that she thought Stevie was the one who slammed the door. Carole apologizes and asks Lisa to go for ice cream after class.

Stevie is having a bad day. She's late for class, she's having trouble getting people to cover all the odd jobs, and she gets Max mad at her. After he lectures her, she meets Carole at the ice cream parlor and pays her four dollars for grooming Cobalt. Carole is annoyed because she says Stevie needs the money more than she does. Lisa explains that Stevie is getting commissions for all the work she's giving to other people.

After Lisa leaves, Carole has to wait for the bus. Now, this -- this was really a stroke of genius on BB's part. I actually don't think it's logical to have a D.C. suburb with such good bus service. My cousins live in the D.C. suburbs (Fairfax Station), and not only have I never seen a bus there, but the houses are way too spread out to deploy efficient bus service to the residential areas. And I imagine that Willow Creek is even more so, given all the farmlands around it. Pine Hollow is within walking/riding distance of farms, houses, mountains, a creek, a highway, a quarry, AND the area where the schools and shopping center are. So it really doesn't make sense to me that there would be a realistic bus route that serves both the downtown Willow Creek area as well as Pine Hollow and the countrified area where Carole lives. Still, it means that these girls are rarely stuck waiting for someone to drive them around, which definitely helps with the plot points.

Anyway, while Carole waits for her bus, she stops by the music store and sees that Stevie won third prize, a portable cassette player, in that contest she entered. Stevie goes to the store to pick up her prize, and realizes she needs to buy some cassettes because, get this, she has all her favorite albums "on record." Yeah, this was definitely published in 1988. So of course -- ouch, ouch, wait for it -- she has to buy a tape. Just one. She has lots of money. She's all excited. Yeah. NOW you see where this is going.

Next Saturday. After class, Lisa and Carole go to Stevie's house to listen to all her new tapes -- that is, her ten tapes at six or seven dollars each, which means that Stevie spent all her money except for $4.18. Now it's her turn to freak out, which she does by throwing all her papers and notes and receipts from her odd jobs all over the room. Lisa is totally uncomfortable, because Carole is trying to make Stevie feel better but she and Stevie really aren't close at all yet. That also rings pretty thirteen-year-old-girl true to me. While Stevie screams and shouts, Lisa picks up her papers and realizes that Stevie has enough records to put together a math project on decimals and percentages. Over the next three days, Lisa and Carole help Stevie with her math project. They also get Max to convince Lisa's mother that she's a good enough rider to go on the MTO.

Friday. Stevie turns in her math project.

Monday afternoon. Stevie calls Carole to tell her that she got an A+ on her math project, and her "term grade" will be a B+. Damn, that was some fast grading!

Some indeterminate day, which is probably Tuesday after riding class. The girls hang out in Stevie's room and form the Saddle Club, which has only two requirements: Members must be horse crazy, and they must "be a friend to the other members." They clink their sodas (no pizza toasts with this group), they schmooze, they dance, everything's fine. Yay!

I do have two more things I want to bring up here, and then I'll be done with this massively long first post. The Publishers Weekly editorial review for this book complains that the action is "curiously motiveless: Why, for instance, is Lisa's domineering mother so eager to push her daughter into riding lessons? And what, if anything, is the real reason for spoiled rich-girl Veronica's nastiness?" The Veronica question is handled very well in later books, especially #2. The Mrs. Atwood question is a little tougher. Honestly, Mrs. Atwood is like the human version of Cobalt (the high-strung, competitive one). Throughout the rest of the series, she continues to be pushy, and in the books where Lisa talks about the past she was pushy then as well. The problem is, her pushiness takes many different forms -- sometimes she's downright neurotic, other times she gets clinically depressed, other times her goal is to rub shoulders with the Willow Creek elite, other times she gets into a can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees mindset. Even in this book, she switches from being brag-about-how-Lisa-is-such-a-good-rider-so-it's-a-good-thing-Max-didn't-take-her-word-for-it-and-put-her-in-a-really-advanced-class!Mrs. Atwood to overprotective!Mrs. Atwood. Overall, she continues to be someone who I wouldn't want to be my mother, but the specifics of what she does depend on the plot of each book.

The second thing is that this book has been reprinted five times with different covers, and reissued once. Last year, Random House/Yearling began reissuing books with new cover art and also minor text changes. They changed the whole Stevie receiving a tape player/buying tapes to Stevie receiving a portable CD player/buying CDs. They also changed the cost of the CDs -- Stevie buys ten CDs at twelve dollars each, a total of $120, which makes sense. But the MTO in 2007 still costs $50, the same way it did in 1988. Stevie had $4.18 left. That leaves $55 unaccounted for. And if she had $55 to spend on CDs, why did she have to start a business after all? (I covered this at the Pine Hollow LiveJournal community, but it still bothers me.)

Points of Interest:

• Mr. Lake, who never gets a first name throughout the rest of the series, works at a business that "has to do with decimals and percentages" in this book. In later books, he and Mrs. Lake are both lawyers.
• Before BB thought this all the way through, Stevie was going to a "private girls' school in the neighboring town." After BB gets her canon ducks in a row, Stevie and her brothers go to Fenton Hall, a private coed school in Willow Creek.
• This book also establishes that Lisa has a brother, from whom Mrs. Atwood would not Lisa borrow a tie to complete her Michelle Tanner costume. The unnamed brother gets a mention in book 7, when he's at camp, and later it's explained that he's much older than Lisa (eight years) and in college or living abroad for the rest of the series, until Pine Hollow. I would say "Maybe that's why Mrs. Atwood is so neurotic," but one of the later books proves she was neurotic long before Peter went to college.
  
• Pine Hollow has this tradition called the "soda whip," where each person in the class grabs a whip at the end of class. Whoever has a whip with a bottle cap attached is in charge of getting sodas for the rest of the class, and her partner has to cool and untack her horse. I think BB was going for a really sweet, traditional kind of feel here, but there are so many problems with this that I can't even figure out where to start: What if you're not riding in pairs at the end of class? Wouldn't that take a lot of time? Wouldn't all that soda for all those classes be expensive? Plus, someone has to buy it and put it all in the fridge. Wouldn't it be unhealthy? Maybe not for the older kids, but I'm sure the parents of those six-year-olds aren't pushing sodas at the end of every class. Not to mention that the soda whip dies a quiet death somewhere around book 5.

What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men? The Shadow (Horse) Knows

Shadow Horse
by Alison Hart
First Printing in Hardcover: 1999
First Printing in Paperback: 2001

In my avoidance of reading more books of the Ashleigh series, I ended up at Borders with $9 remaining on my Christmas gift card that I just had to get rid of somehow. So I cased the young adult/juvenile section, and picked up a mystery by Alison Hart, which is of course the pen name for a Thoroughbred author. It was an Edgar Award Nominee; not sure if it won or if it was the only book nominated that year or something, but heck, I gave it a stab (har har) and read the thing.

After assaulting the owner of the horse farm where she works, thirteen-year-old Jasmine Schuler must face the inside of a courtroom and then juvenile hall.

Jas knows no one will believe her defense -- that the man she attacked had poisoned Whirlwind, the mare she loved. Wealthy horse owner Hugh Robicheaux is powerful enough to shift all blame to Jas's grandfather. But Jas refuses to give up. After the judge pronounces her guilty of assault and puts her into foster care at Second Chance, a farm for abused animals, she remains determined to prove her charge against Hugh.

The key becomes a scrawny brown gelding she rescues at a horse auction. She's sure Shadow is somehow connected to the mare she lost, but how?

Brilliant! It’s a grand synopsis. Pretty spot on, does Random House have better synopsis writers than Harper Collins or something? Other than the fact that the rescued horse turns out to be chestnut, and not brown, I think it fits pretty well. There’s the story in three simple paragraphs. Also, Hugh Robicheaux is sort of sleazy, and does not ever meet the awesomeness that is Brad Townsend. Just because.

So we begin with a flashback; one I think was adequately enough written that I feel I ought to share. It certainly beats out other beginning paragraphs in other books.

She was a flash of gold as she cantered around the ring. Ears pricked, neck arched, she moved like a movie star in the spotlight as she sailed over the last fence. Landing smoothly, she slowed to a trot, tossing her mane as if to say, “Wasn’t I great?”

Because she was great. She was the most beautiful horse in the world.

But now, she was dead.

The whole mane-tossing horse “talking” bit aside, I rather liked that, it seemed pretty and all. So thus we begin with Jasmine moping sadly over a picture of her favoritest horse in the whole world in the middle of the court holding room, whilst clutching a paper bag full of (possibly dirty) underwear and wearing handcuffs, which only serves to add to her embarrassment because said bag fall on the floor, and everyone can clearly see that Jas (because obviously, she needs a nickname to make her seem bad-girl) does not go for racy lacy lingerie from Victoria’s Secret. Needless to say, this draws the attention of Vince, a future gangbanger/drugdealer who feels the need for his very own bitch. So he hits on her, and she plays coy, and tries to brush him off before the cops come, and take her into the courtroom.

You see, it is then revealed that Jas has done what Ashleigh Griffen and the rest of the TB-verse girls would never in their wildest dreams have dared do. She freaking tries to rip off the face of our Wicked Villain, Hugh Robicheaux, with a piddly-ass hoofpick. Unfortunately for Jas, a hoofpick is neither sharp or dangerous, and she does nothing more than slash his cheek (if Hugh was actually bleeding as a result, he’s a fucking pussy.) This however means that Jas is now branded as a juvenile criminal, and being as she’s pretty much poor trailer trash, she has been appointed a public defender, while Hugh can afford a sleazy lawyer who practically convinces the judge that Jas is the Second Coming of Jack the Ripper. Bonus points for Skeevy Lawyer to insinuate that the judge has no knowledge of horses whatsoever by informing him what a hoof pick is used for (and double bonus points for him calling a hoof a ‘foot’ and Jas for mentally correcting him.)

And then the Rich Evil Bad Guy™ goes up in front of the judge and just starts oozing sleaziness about what happened on the afternoon of June 1st. Which of course kicks in another flashback for Jas. It seems that her grandfather pretty much had a heart attack/stroke/apoplexy after Hugh grills him mercilessly about a yew branch that turned up in Whirlwind’s pasture. Which of course apparently sends Jas over the edge according to Hugh and he paints a very nice picture of her as a crazy psychopath while the best that Jas can do is mentally insult him by calling him a “dirty, fat liar.” Awwh, c’mon girl, tell us what you really think of him, please! So then we get to the fun part, of the farm manager coming to the stand and get to hear his side of the story. Turns out, Jas does slash Hugh’s cheek. And it bleeds. So yeah, he’s one fucking big pussy. How pathetic can that be? I can’t even manage to scrape my hand with a hoofpick, either Jas is stronger than she looks or Hugh is on a power trip and keeps razor sharp hoofpicks in his tackroom.

And then, it gets it even better because once Hugh and Jas are alone after she assaults him, he threatens and gloats over her which adds a whole new dimension to their relationship. But that’s all in a nice flashback, because we’re thrust back into the present, with Jas being found guilty and being placed into foster care. And she gets to wear one of those electronic monitor bracelets which will enforce her lockdown. Whoop! This gets better and better. Once Social Services and the probation officer lay the smackdown on Jas, it’s off to Second Chance Farm where she’ll be staying.

Jas is excited at first because her foster home is run by a chick named Miss Hahn, and there’s horses. But then, her first view of the place pretty much confirms that Second Chance Farm (the sign actually reads S COND CHANCE ARM) is a real shithole. Because it’s rundown, and the animals there are *gasp* mutts and stuff. At least the dogs are, and one only has three legs, which is clearly Jas’s rude introduction to the world outside the perfectly manicured estate of Mr. Rich Evil Asshat Villain who only keeps blue-blooded purebred critters on his land, thank you.

So anyway, Jas goes up into her room, but just because she’s now a criminal mastermind, she keeps her hand in by snooping around the room of her foster parent. And lo and behold, she finds several pictures of Miss Hahn riding a horse, and in one picture, who should be lurking sinisterly in the background – but Rich Asshat Villain himself. *SHOCK!* However can Jas trust Miss Hahn now?

Jas then takes a shower. And I gotta hand it to Alison Hart at this point because she actually acknowledges in a book that Jas is buck naked in the shower because y’know, people are usually buck naked in the shower. And there’s no reason it ought to really be glossed over in a book for teens, right? Teens are ever so aware of their burgeoning sexuality, after all. And in the meantime, she steals some of Miss Hahn’s scented shampoo. That criminal mastermind, her!

And just as Jas emerges from the shower, she gets a phone call from a mysterious stranger. Well, actually, it’s a guy who claims to be called ‘Dr. Aladdin’ and he’s calling about her grandfather. Now, at this point, I’d say something’s seriously fucked up with the situation because Dr. Aladdin turns out to be Hugh – and if Miss Hahn has past connections with Hugh, she’s got to be the dumbest broad on the face of the planet if she can’t recognize his voice. Also, someone in Social Services is a squealer. Or something. Because Hugh knew exactly where Jas was. And anyway, he calls her, and it practically gets her heart racing. Now, my gut feeling right there is Hugh gets a hard on when he threatens Jas – I can just imagine him jacking off while he talks to her over the phone because the guy sounds really creepy, and a lot like some sick stalker. (But hey, maybe it’s my sick twisted mind at work, but I doubt that.) And he does ask Jas to say hello to Diane for him… Diane being Miss Hahn. Which adds more doubt into Jas’s mind that her foster parent is in cahoots with Hugh.

And then it all clicks together for Jas – that Aladdin is actually the name of a horse that died when she was 8, and she saw the dead horse, and it’s mentally scarred her tiny little mind for life. So anyway, she dries her hair, and runs into this boy who works at the farm named Chase. And he takes her out to the barn, and shocks her out of her frigid little mind because the farm is like a freaking barnyard with llamas and cows, and geese and other assorted farm creatures beyond your average equine specimens. And the stable office is like a dump compared to the immaculate cleanliness of Hugh’s High Meadows Farm, and this just breaks Jas’s heart because Second Chance Farm is basically a place for abandoned animals – or as she puts it … “rejects.” (Gee, isn’t she a high and mighty little snob, considering how close to being a reject she is.)

To make a long story short, Jas runs across one of the ‘rejects’ at Second chance Farm -- an emaciated horse – and it shocks her sheltered snobby trailer trash self in such a way that she literally sicks up her guts at the sight of it. So she freaks out at Chase, and pretty much says that the vet ought to put all the horses down because they’re “no good” and Chase gives her whatfor by calling her a horse snob. Go Chase!

Jas gets to go along with Miss Hahn and Chase to a horse auction, and she practically shits a brick when she hears they only have a budget of $850. I mean, holy hell, that sure won’t buy y’know, a Thoroughbred. And lookee there, kill buyers. I really really gotta hand it to Alison here, you’d never ever hear a hint of kill buyers in the Thoroughbred world (because even the slowest nag in the world lives in a magical land of sunshine and rainbows and the selfsame sparkly golden butterfly farts from Magikal Gypsy Vanner butts) so I really really gotta say how happy I am that Alison is not wrapping this story up in more of the above. It’s real. Yeah, kill buyers are total shit and all, but y’know, they do exist, and people should be aware of them. And shit, they’re hauling ‘em away in a double decker. It’s the seedy underbelly of horse society. And it’s real, and there’s no reason anyone ought to be wrapped in cotton about it. Just tell it like it is.

So while at the auction, Jas spies a horse being led around. A big horse with weird orange hair. And she realizes what’s wrong with the horse. And gets into an argument with the seller, who’s very blunt at telling her he’d rather the horse went to the kill buyers because he could actually make some money rather than paying to get the horse’s problem fixed. And man, that guy must really need to get laid, because he tries to hit Jas up and proposition her. Sicko! If Jas doesn’t have enough problems with the guy, Reaves, she then gets into a fight with Chase about the horse and how he can be fixed up and sold for big money. Which only pisses Chase off because the horse was dumped because he wasn’t valuable anymore. Luckily, Jas runs into Miss Hahn, and they get the horse, and he becomes Jas’s project to work with. Hurrah!

The next day, Jas goes to see her grandfather in the nursing home. Her granddad suggests she talk to Hugh’s vet, Dr. Danvers, because Danvers would have had to examine Whirlwind after the horse’s death. Hmm, how thoughtful. So Jas files that away for reference, and then tells her grandfather about the horse they rescued the day before, whom she named Shadow. And along the way, she finds out that Danvers is pretty much donating time to the horse rescue, which means she’ll get to talk to him face to face. What glee!

So after Dr. Danvers gives the Shadow some meds, and they talk about the thyroid issue a bit, Jas seizes her chance, and asks the vet about the yew killing Whirlwind. And it turns out, the yew itself didn’t kill her, but rather the colic reaction she experienced with a twisted gut (and god, that was hard for me to read for a second there, given Flair’s death due to intestinal colic of that severity) but needless to say, Dr. Danvers is no longer the vet for our evil villain. This obviously raises him in Jas’s esteem because she invivtes him to come over for dinner. Because hey, he’s kinda got this thing for Miss Hahn, and apparently she wants to screw him blind or something. Excellent, so not only is Jas a criminal mastermind, she’s a human version of a dating hotline. Brilliance!

So our intrepid heroine suspects that Hugh killed Whirlwind for the insurance money, but as she later finds out, Whirlwind was only insured for fifty grand, but this makes her even more suspicious, and she throws all caution to the wind, and asks Phil about Aladdin. Aladdin it seems also died of colic (one of the number one killers of horses anywhere) and was only worth thirty grand so he didn’t have a full autopsy. Hmm, the mystery grows!

And as it turns out, Shadow is a chestnut. Whoda thunk! And he’s turning into a big old monster. Which doesn’t add to Jas’s problems because now she’s pretty much at it in a drop dirty fight with Chase. Who continues to insist that she’s a bloody horse snob with a swelled head the size of Texas. They scream at each other a bit, and Chase finally admits he’s jealous that Jas can ride so well. And Jas puts Shadow out in pasture. Whereuopn they learn the horse can jumping a fucking five foot wall as if it were a cavaletti. And herd cattle too. Just like the dead Aladdin. What’s going on here? Is it time to even start to cue the ominous mystery music?

Now, it turns out that Jas’s social worker contacted her mother. Jas it seems is the product of a teen pregnancy, and her mother dumped her off on her parents, and took off after that to become a jockey. And she doesn’t want Jas anyway, so that’s settled. And then Jas recruits Chase, and Lucy (a girl who works at the farm and can drive) into sneaking over to the one place that she’s been banned from for life – High Meadows. And she steals the photo album and her grandfather’s dog. Assult, and theft .. whoo, this kid’s racking up the brownie points. But the photo album was necessary because as it turns out, Shadow has the exact same markings as Aladdin does. Can it be… are they one and the same? Could Shadow have risen from the dead?

Or, as Jas’s grandfather suggests, could Shadow have been a ringer for Aladdin? Because Hugh then bought two horses for over a million dollars … but if Aladdin was only insured for 30 grand, then where’d the rest of the dough come from? Unless … the ringer was the one that died, and Aladdin is Shadow. Dun dun dun!

Does this also mean that Whirlwind is not truly dead? The suspense builds!

Jas enlists the help of the vet, and they scan Shadow for a microchip. And lo and behold, the horse has one. Suspense! But alas, the vet can’t find Aladdin’s file, so he’s not sure if the numbers all match up. But in the meantime, Miss Hahn and Jas haul Shadow over to a friend’s house. Now, this friend is apparently rich, and probably is screwing Hugh the way Jas imagines Miss Hahn is. But just before they leave, Dr. Danvers phones with the most unexpected expected news possible (I mean obviously!) The numbers match up. Shadow is Aladdin, Aladdin is Shadow. Hugh is a dirty rotten double timing crook. Like duh!

They arrive at Miss Hahn’s friend’s place, and Jas goes into the tack room to get a saddle, only to find her crazy creepy potential rapist stalker there. (Man, Hugh really gets around.) And she confronts him, and he admits that Whirlwind isn’t dead. And he threatens her.

But here comes to save the day! Miss Hahn is on her way! Because now it’s Girl Power against Evil Villain Scum! And Hugh retreats, muttering “If it wasn’t for that meddling Miss Hahn” which leaves Jas free to ride Shadow over fences and pretty much give Miss Hahn’s friend a hard on over how well the horse jumps. Bully! And the best part is, Miss Hahn turns her down flat, and offers Jas and her grandfather a home at Second Chance Farm. Hooray! And life can now be happily ever after. Plus, maybe Jas can try and find Whirlwind.

Points of Interest:

• Vince is in Juvie because the cops caught him with weed. He's 13, and already doing drugs. This is a far cry from the world of Thoroughbred where apparently except for a minor incident with drugs, the backside is surprisingly drug free because Whitebrook people let their kids run around the place by themselves.

• Miss Tomlinson, Jas's social worker, talks about the horses that Miss Hahn has as being "big ones, small ones, pretty ones." but admits she doesn't know one horse from another and I like it... the non-horse world far outnumbers the horse world, where some people don't know jack about a horse -- it just makes for a refreshing change.

• Chase seems to start to say something, and then stops. And Jas mentally fills in something she'd think she'd like to hear like .."because you're cute." etc. It's amusing, because Chase does kiss her later on in the book, but I'd almost have hoped he'd turn out to be gay or something, and have something else in mind than Jas's conveniently mental conversation endings.

• Miss Hahn apparently had a wealthy father with a fancy horse farm. I betcha anything High Meadows probably used to be in her family before Hugh got his hands on it.

• Jas's mother was only 16 when she got pregnant. Teenage pregnancy is not avoided in this book, even if it's only a brief mention.

This was a good book, I must say. I’d have to give it a 6 out of 10 because it was realistic, focused and actually examined the seedy underberlly of the horse world; in a way that Thoroughbred and many of its ilk seemed to brush things off. In the same way, Alison doesn’t brush other aspects of society off either; the fact that Jas is in trouble with the law, and she has to have a probation officer, etc. It’s not sunshine and butterflies. My only regret is that there never was a sequel. It seemed so much like it was building up to one in the end, and then it all went flat. I certainly would have been interested in a continuation.

So there we have Shadow Horse, and coming up next, we step back in time to an America long past with To Race A Dream which I foresee I'm likely to be fleeing from at the very end.

Crushing depression + horses = crushing depression

Not on a White Horse
by Nancy Springer
Published: 1988

So, I used to own this book when I was younger and it was something I reread often. I must have had a few passages memorized because it seems absolutely none of it faded.

Incidentally, I had the paperback version of this book, which had a completely different cover that I oddly do not remember at all. Since various internet searches left me with nothing except this cover...I guess this is the cover we will use. I'm not a big fan of it, but that's probably because it's boring.

Rhiannon DiAngelo's reality is the despair of a western Pennsylvania coal-mining town where unemployment, alcoholism, and teenage pregnancy are the norms. But her dream is of horses, and when she reads a notice in the paper about a white Arabian lost and running loose amid the scrub woods and slag heaps, she feels she has to find him.

Angel, as Ree names the horse, appears to her fleetingly, and pursuit of this, her dream, changes Rhiannon's life. Her search for Angel leads her to Chickie Miller, a soft-hearted farrier, and his family, and to Prince, a starved and neglected horse who desperately needs her.

Although her dream of trying to catch Angel seems a futile fantasy, Ree finds that her dream of being with horses can be real. Meeting and learning from Chickie gives her a new perspective and the strength to make new choices in life.

Starting off, I'm going to say first that there is nothing happy and light about this book. It's not even unintentionally funny. It's all depression, all the time. So I'm not quite sure why I was so intrigued by it when I was ten or however old. It just starts out depressing, and ends about 1% less depressing. I have a feeling that was Nancy Springer's modus operandi, and probably why I could never get through any of her other books. Although, lucky me, my library has what looks like all of her other horse books, so I guess, Colt, Sky Rider, The Boy on a Black Horse, They're All Named Wildfire, The Great Pony Hassle, and A Horse to Love will all be seen in the future of this blog. And by the time I'm done with those I'll probably be on suicide watch.

So anyway, Rhiannon is our twelve-year-old protagonist. Her father, Bob, is an unemployed steel worker (this I find interesting given we keep hearing about the closed coal mines and not about the shut down steel mills, so I'm not sure if this is a glaring disconnect or what) who does odd jobs for money that he immediately spends on booze. Her mother, Bonnie, works two jobs and doesn't get paid enough. Then there's Rhiannon, her sister, Deirdre, and her brother, Shawn. Rhiannon is the middle child, and she's horse crazy but has absolutely no riding experience because she learned a long time ago that riding lessons where so far out of her family's league that I guess she never bothered asking for them. She sees an ad for a lost white Arabian, and immediately rushes off to look for this horse, bringing her boy-crazy friend Lisa along with her.

Anyway, eventually she starts seeing this horse and gets in contact with the owner, Chickie. He's one of those extremely nice guys who offers to let her go riding with him to hunt down this horse, because she's the only one who's been seeing it and he's been having no luck. Rhiannon is thrilled with this development, and finally starts to learn how to ride. Only then her dad has to ruin the whole experience by asking her if Chickie is molesting her. Yes, that would be a mood ruiner, but Rhiannon is determined to not be like her older sister, whom I guess lets older men touch her? I don't know about that, and no one elaborates. So anyway, Rhiannon gets all pissed off and says something about how her dad is just a drunk who is basically worthless, and her father overhears this and decides that he's going to run off somewhere and be worthless by himself.

For the record, Rhiannon spends more time hunting down her crazy father than she does this Arabian. She usually finds him, and this is mainly because she's always scared he's going to go get drunk and jump off a bridge. So, besides her rapidly degenerating home life, things are going pretty well for Rhiannon at Chickie's until he brings home this neglected horse. Chickie sort of collects neglected horses, much to his wife's annoyance. But he insists on helping this horse out and Rhiannon lends a hand with the horse, which she names Prince because it was the name she was saving for her very own horse. Stupid name, sure, but I always really liked Prince. He is the total opposite of all the other abused/neglected horses that have been saved in the countless books I've read for this blog. He loves people. In fact, he can't get enough attention from people and wants desperately to please, which makes him even more pathetic.

Anyway, while Prince is on the mend he picks out Rhiannon as his special person, as we all knew he would, and then Rhiannon's sister does the expected stupid thing and runs off with her boyfriend to get married. Then her dad runs off again. And she has to go find him...again...and he tells her about how he always wanted more for his kids than to keep the evil cycle of stupidity going by forgoing education and happiness for marriage and children. With this message still in her head, Rhiannon does not react well when Bucky, Chickie's son who is "almost out of high school," kisses her and wants to "show" her other "things." She tells him she's almost thirteen and he kicks himself for thinking she's fifteen, although later on he starts showering attention on Lisa, who is only thirteen and the squick factor reaches unbelievable heights.

Eventually Rhiannon's sister comes home, upset that married life wasn't all dancing and eating out, or something. It's also heavily implied that she needs an abortion, and the divorce is glossed over. The problem is Deirdre is being a bitch about all of this, so her dad smacks her around and then goes on what appears to be a two week long bender in Pittsburgh. Rhiannon loses herself in riding Chickie's horses out to find Angel, who she hasn't seen in a while. Angel then becomes a major metaphor for her happiness and whatever else, as she eventually does find the horse and even catches him. Only he sort of beats her up and escapes again. Then her dad comes home. Ta da! Metaphor complete. Or almost complete. Whatever.

So her dad realizes what a drunk bastard he is and decides to go to AA. He comes to tell Rhiannon this at Chickie's place, and she's a little beyond caring and just tells him whatever. Getting sober and finding a job is his decision. She's already decided to go to school and become a farrier or a vet or something so she can get away from their insanely depressing mining town. Then she takes Prince on a walk and finds Angel again, with the lead rope she'd used to try to capture him still around his neck. He comes up to socialize with Prince and she takes this opportunity to take the lead rope off Angel. Then Angel runs off and she takes Prince back home.

• It occurs to me now how completely out of nowhere the Rhiannon/Bucky, Bucky/Lisa thing is. You don't expect him to just out of nowhere kiss Rhiannon, because there's barely anything there to support why he'd randomly do that besides the fact that the story requires angst for Rhiannon on a more personal level while she's learning that being a high school dropout so you can give birth to babies when you're sixteen will make you be unhappy forever is a bad thing.
  

• Plus, the Lisa thing. I cannot for the life of me figure out why they are friends. Especially when Rhiannon outright tells Lisa she's going to be just like Deirdre.
  

• At one point, Chickie is going on and on about how people shouldn't breed their horses if they don't know what they're doing because they wind up with a neglected foal that isn't trained properly and...well, you can guess the rest. This becomes a metaphor for stupid people like Rhiannon's sister who run off and get married and have babies at the age of 16, drawing a comparison between breeding horses and breeding people that I found pretty fascinating, actually. Stupid people should not breed unsound horses. Just like stupid people should not breed to each other. Rhiannon starts pondering how this applies to her life, finally amusing me somewhat.
  

I don't know. I still think it's a fairly solid book. It is way more depressing than I remember it being, though. To the point where I guess it makes sense to me now why I never could get through The Boy on a Black Horse and never bothered with anything else by Nancy Springer. Her books are almost like children's versions of In The Presence of Horses by Barbara Dimmick. Which I should really reread for this blog, because it made me want to throw it through a window the first time around.

Never judge a man by his cowboy outfit; or A Horse Called Bonnie

A Horse Called Bonnie
by Pat Johnson and Barbara van Tuyl
Published: 1971

Because I'm still attempting to get my hands on A Home for Melanie without breaking down and buying it (I don't own the majority of the New Generation...I know, it's a tragedy), I'm spending my time with Julie Jefferson and Bonnie instead. After all, The Sweet Running Filly was awesome, right? It would stand to reason that the sequel would be just as good.

Unfortunately, I bring bad news. I read this book with a look of utter confusion on my face, I am sure. I was gaping at the text on the page with open befuddlement. In fact, if anyone had seen me read this, I'm sure I would have been questioned on if I was okay. I was not okay. To the blurb:

Hope and Heartbreak

When young Julie Jefferson started to race her horse Bonnie under the colors of Fieldstone Farm, the future looked bright. There was the excitement of turning an untried filly into a racing horse, the trainers and jockeys who helped teach Julie the tricks of the trade, and the growing certainty that Bonnie was the stuff of which great champions were made.

But suddenly everything changed. Someone was out to steal Bonnie, or else make sure the gallant filly would never win another race -- and dangerous illness darkened the horse's chances still further. It seemed that heartbreak waited at the finish line for Julie Jefferson and her dream -- until the courageous girl made a daring gamble in a story whose thrilling climax will leave readers gasping with surprise and delight.

Yeah, I hate blurbs like this. It goes along, trying to tell you about the story, and then it turns to the seedy salesman approach at the end. It never fails to piss me off. This one seems to imply that not only will we like the story, it will help readers achieve orgasm. On top of this, the blurb is magnificently ridiculous. It verges on being completely wrong, if the book had not been fantastically weird to begin with. So, here we go:

Because this book is a sequel we have to start out with something that will remind us all of the first book and its wacky adventure. This is accomplished in a letter Mr. Tolkov sends to the Jockey Club regarding how Bonnie actually was discovered and blah blah blah. Long story short, Mr. Tolkov wants to register Bonnie. Julie gets this done in person and actually gets her first choice for the filly's name: Sunbonnet. Which is cute. It gets my stamp of approval. I had that horrible feeling that they were going to name her Star Princess and that would have sent my Thoroughbred alarms going full tilt.

Anyway, Julie and Monty are getting Bonnie ready for her maiden race right when a telegram arrives from St. Clair farm informing Julie that her father fell off a ladder and none of his animal friends saved him from injuring his back. So she calls up Stash at St. Clair farm and he tells her all about this horrible ladder episode while I wonder to myself why she doesn't call her father. But no, she can't worry him with her worrying, so Stash tells her he's sent his son, Beau, to nurse Mr. Jefferson until they can get him into his extremely pricey surgery. Dismayed that she's living in a society without universal health care, Julie does something incredibly stupid. Like, this is where I made that "what?" face. I was so blown over by this sheer, crazy ass idiocy I started laughing hysterically. Bonnie's maiden race closes before they can get the filly into the field (sloppy set up #1) and Julie is desperate for quick cash (incredibly sloppy set up #2) so the racing secretary takes her over to the condition book to look for a suitable race and finds absolutely nothing (completely irrational sloppy set up #3) except for a $20,000 CLAIMER.

Yes, that's right. Everyone reasons that no one would know who Bonnie is, what with her new ID number and new name and...the same parents and birth year and sex...but hey! Who's paying attention to measily details like that, especially when they can just read them out of a racing form? Convinced that everyone who attends horse races or has half a brain would never connect Bonnie to Star Princess, Deepwater Farm (which Julie, I must inform everyone again, WORKS FOR), and the fact that Bonnie was that $400,000 record yearling of only a year previous that Deepwater Farm BOUGHT, Julie, without speaking to anyone else, enters her precious horse that is her everything in a CLAIMING RACE.

So, right about here, you can see my problem. It is the stupidest set up for a plot in the history of stupid set ups. I am just stunned. STUNNED. I...just don't have words.

Because this is a set up, of course someone claims Bonnie. I mean, we saw that coming about two hundred zillion miles away. And of course, Julie is STUNNED. And I want to SMACK her. What the hell? Oh my God.

WHATEVERS! We've got more ridiculous plot to get through, because after Bonnie has been claimed by someone who looks like Clint Eastwood from his stint as The Man With No Name (I am so dead serious. Think Stetson and duster and boots and holsters), Monty thinks something is seriously up about this crap. No, really. Like, putting a horse that is obviously a worth while claim to anyone with eyes in a claiming race and having it wind up claimed means some nefarious evil is afoot. And Monty is going to find out what's going on, damn it! So Julie spends some time sniffling in a stall and Monty goes on a war path, going to the racing secretary to find out who claimed the horse. The racing secretary does one of those classic "I can't help you but oh look here's the name of the guy and it's not my fault if you read it and see the phone number right there and oh, I have to leave my office right now but feel free to use the phone all you like while I pretend to not know what you're doing" acts.

See, the thing about this book is that despite the blatant stupidity, it's still funny in that dry humor way. I appreciate that. It's the only thing that kept me going.

So Monty discovers that Bonnie was claimed by this guy named Rodinbaugh (our Clint Eastwood) for this guy named Mr. Black. Monty tries to call up Black, but he's not around and Rodinbaugh is all pissy and this all culminates in Julie flying to New York to talk to Black. This results in a really out of nowhere and weird conversation with Black's wife and his two very annoying teeny bopper daughters. Then Black arrives and everyone swoops in to meet him, including the cat. Julie finds out that Black had no idea what Rodinbaugh was doing, making the claim invalid. So Julie flies back to Kentucky and discovers that Bonnie is being raced back by Rodinbaugh. She exclaims that that can't happen (and I think that this is probably because the horse just ran the day before, but whatever) and so Monty and the racing secretary and Julie run to stop the race but it's too late. The race goes off and the new jockey beats the crap out of Bonnie and Julie is forlorn and Bonnie wins but is disqualified because she was entered with Black as her owner. Then Rodinbaugh has his license revoked and that's that.

Only Bonnie is traumatized! Woe! She won't have a man on her back while going at high speeds, and she doesn't like starting gates anymore and she's generally just put out by the whole racing experience. She wants nothing to do with it...expect when Julie is on her back. So, now our Thoroughbred plot has shifted into full gear. They go to Hialeah for his "Forget-Me-Not Stakes" and Bonnie is dumping Beau every chance she can get. Because Julie is the only one that can really ride Bonnie, it's decided that Julie should get her jockey license. But because she's a girl the stewards won't let her, which leads Mr. Tolkov to basically sue everyone. And then Bonnie colicks and that takes about an eternity to resolve.

While Beau, Julie and Monty are busy being completely incompetent, Rodinbaugh shows up. Now, it's worth while to mention that Julie has been completely paranoid about Rodinbaugh for the entirety of the book. She's sure he's out to get her and steal Bonnie or something equally stupid. Like cause her to colic. So Rodinbaugh appears and everyone starts in a fashion that they basically all stumble over each other and upset the horse while Rodinbaugh demands to know what is wrong with them. This, I feel, is an excellent question.

Meanwhile, Mr. Jefferson has had his surgery and is visiting them in Florida, he calls up Stash in Ohio and they get to talking about this magic cure for colic that involves a hypodermic needle. The kind you'd perform a spinal tap with. I don't know the terms for this, but whatever. So Mr. Jefferson goes off on this wild hunt for a giant needle and Stash flies in from Ohio, only then Mr. Jefferson's car won't start because his battery is dead. Beyond jumping dead. Stranded at the airport and apparently incapable of calling a taxi or taking a bus, they basically sit on their asses and wait for someone to realize that they're stuck there.

Okay, so back to Hialeah. Monty gets kicked in the shoulder and has to go to the doctor, leaving Rodinbaugh and Julie together. Julie gets the message from Beau that Stash and her dad are at the airport. Rodinbaugh offers to get them in his car and Beau says he can just get a taxi and Rodinbaugh gets all pissed again because HE HAS A CAR YOU IDIOTS. Then he gets totally fed up with these people and picks up Julie, throws her over his shoulder, dumps her in his car (which I'm guessing would be awesome because it's black and menacing looking) and takes off for the airport. During this time they have a long conversation about how he's a nice person but had a lonely childhood and that's why he dresses up like Clint Eastwood and is pissy all the time. And they have a long chat about how cool Pegasus is. Basically, by the end of it I was halfway expecting Julie to crawl into Rodinbaugh's lap and make out with him. This, much to my disappointment, did not happen.

Anyway, they pick up Stash and the needle and then Stash stabs Bonnie with the needle and this means she is okay again. Yay. Julie kisses Rodinbaugh on the cheek, causing gasps from all, and restrained jealousy from Monty. Who has done absolutely nothing regarding his extremely veiled lust for her so I don't care about his stupid feelings.

So because Mr. Tolkov is awesome and rich, he successfully gets Julie's license and she's all set to ride Bonnie. But then these newspaper articles come out and declare who Bonnie really is because I guess everyone who watches horse racing really is stupid and didn't really know who Bonnie was. Rodinbaugh just had an in on the information because he's the uncle of one of the Deepwater assistant trainers. This starts up a completely illogical problem: the other jockeys in the Forget-Me-Not Stakes don't want to race against Julie and Bonnie because they are a "team" and the odds are incredibly stacked against them. They say either they get another jockey for Bonnie or they'll strike and it will be a match race between Bonnie and this other jockey who doesn't care who he races against. Rodinbaugh calls them out as cowardly assholes, but everyone else is all hey, yeah, they're actually right. And the second most IDIOTIC thing happens: Julie decides to NOT RIDE.

And I have no idea where that plot was even going. The book kept pushing for this whole female equality thing and then in the end Julie gives in. Beau rides Bonnie instead and they have some moment of true understanding and win in a photo.

I don't know what else to even say about this book other than it's totally and unexpectedly bad next to The Sweet Running Filly. However, it still has some of that awesomeness from the previous book and some fun dialogue. It's just that the plot was a complete and contrived mess.

That's it, guys. The next one in the series is called Sunbonnet: Filly of the Year (not at all telling), and written only by Barbara van Tuyl, so we'll see if the series minus one author improves it or makes it worse. I've also got Not on a White Horse by Nancy Springer (more childhood nostalgia!) as I wait some more on A Home For Melanie.

Blind Beauty: bringing the crazy back to horse stories.

Blind Beauty
by K.M. Peyton
Published: 1999

I didn't really know what I was getting into with this book when I picked it up. To me it was just a young adult book with a horse on the cover, so I mindlessly added it to the stack of books I already had and checked them all out. This one is on the long side -- 360 pages -- but I'm pretty sure it could have been cut down severely to get the whole story in. But that would have meant deleting all the exclamatory sentences that come out of nowhere, and as we all know, you can't just do that in horse stories because that takes away most of the completely insane emotional turmoil our characters have to go through. God forbid. Anyway.

Tessa has major attitude and an impossible dream—not a great combination for success. But she believes that fate has delivered the ungainly horse Buffoon to her, and Tessa is determined never to be separated from him. What's more, she intends to one day become a jockey and ride Buffoon in the Grand National. But how can a girl with a violent temper and a “can't do” philosophy gain the physical strength, courage, and money needed to become a jockey—especially when her stepfather would like nothing better than to see her fail? Determination and grit may not be enough—but Tessa's not going to let go without giving it her all.

Okay, the thing about this book is that you can see how it clearly could be good. It really had the potential. Unfortunately it took that potential and then sort of shoved it into the 1960's and decided that "major attitude" could very well mean "homicidal tendencies." Who can tell the difference, right? I'll get to that part later, because it's really the absolute best part.

So, much to my extreme vexation, this book starts out in Ireland. I made a promise to myself that I wasn't going to read another book set in Ireland for at least twelve months, and I just about had to shut it down after the first chapter because the first character we hear about is named Declan. It was almost too much. However, I soldiered on. Declan was having a tough time, mainly because his only mare just gave birth to a filly with no eyes. His wife wants to put the foal down immediately, but since the mare is so old and has this fantastic progeny record, he refuses and keeps the foal. They name this horse Shiner.

Speed up to four years down the line. Declan has become a drunk and his wife left him, taking their eight-year-old daughter, Tessa, with her to Liverpool (thank GOD, we've moved to England and therefore I can now enjoy this book). Declan's bred Shiner, producing a ugly colt that Shiner immediately feels like killing. So Declan saves the colt and feels like getting drunk again because his life sucks. Blah blah blah.

Speed forward another four years. Tessa is now twelve and her mother has remarried to this rich guy called Maurice. Maurice, we are very casually informed, is evil. He likes to run over hedgehogs in his spare time and is just, well, evil. I don't know why, but we are repeatedly informed that he's a jackass and he sort of acts like a jackass sometimes because he wants Tessa in a boarding school because he's tired of her and I don't blame him. Fresh out of getting kicked out of her third boarding school, Tessa comes home and muses to herself about how much she'd like to poison Maurice. She even went so far as to buy arsenic or something, so she could do it slowly, over time, and laugh as he dies. This homicidal rage is chalked up as feisty attitude by the author, who somehow thinks her character should be allowed to physically harm anyone she wants because her stepfather is a jerk. Really, I'm not exaggerating. Cross Tessa and she's not going to fantasize about cutting you. She will cut you and then laugh while you bleed to death.

So she comes home and immediately breaks into some of the sherry, raging about how she hates everything and everyone. She hates her stepbrother for being annoying, she hates her mother for being stupid and staying with Maurice, she hates Maurice, she hates school, etc. She has no friends, because she probably tried to kill anyone who attempted to befriend her. She's scary, actually.

Anyway, Maurice is all pissed off because he can't get her into another school, but since it's almost summer he just decides to get her a job and out of his hair. So he shoves her to some tenants who deal with horses and she hates that. She goes, hates everyone, informs them all that she hates her stepfather (repeatedly) and then rages some more about how she hates them all. She's determined to get fired from the job, but no one will do it so she just hates them even more. If I read the word "hate" one more time I was going to put down the book. Unfortunately for me these people get a fresh group of horses in and Tessa is given the ugliest of the bunch to look after. Enraged that she has to deal with this ugly horse, Tessa informs the horse that she hates it (sigh) and that it's ugly as sin and she wants nothing to do with him. The horse, aptly named Buffoon, just sort of looks at her, and then she starts crying. I feel absolutely nothing for her. In fact, I'm happy she's crying at this point because that means she's not trying to kill someone. Then she finds out that the horse is out of Shiner and she goes from hating it to loving it in about two seconds flat and starts doing an impressive version of Cindy McLean...if Cindy had been homicidal.

Anyway, she gets shoved into another school and Tessa is so pissed off she's determined to be expelled and she does this by shoving food in this bulky girl's face and then pulling a knife to defend herself against any revenge food attacks. Seriously. So she's expelled. Yay Tessa. She goes skipping off to the farm again so she can learn to ride Buffoon. There's some screaming about how Buffoon is really hers and how dare anyone inform her that he's actually owned by someone else, and then Buffoon miraculously becomes Wonder's Champion and beats all the other horses in a work with Tessa aboard, doing her best Cindy impression. It's awful. Really, just makes you want to gouge out your eyes. But Tessa is "a natural" and therefore we're supposed to think this is possible. Not to mention this is steeplechasing. Do we spend any time on Tessa learning to jump? Nope. She just does it. But then the book is helped out in this area by skipping another four years. We'll just assume she learned to jump somewhere in there.

So four years go by. Tessa is now sixteen and ready to race ride. Her first race she falls and breaks her wrist. Poor her. Then Buffoon has suddenly become so good in the last four years that he's ready for the Grand National, only just before the race someone steals his magical pony friend! Gasp! So Tessa just knows Maurice is the one that stole the pony, which is so earth shattering that Buffoon refuses to eat, and so she runs over to the mansion and brandishes a knife at anything that moves. Her mother calms her down, and they go to the Grand National and they, like, come in fifth. They're all thrilled, and Tessa's dad shows up, but is all drunk and just randomly walks off. So that was her wonderful father-daughter moment. Tessa goes home, has dinner with her wonderfully loving family, and winds up throwing food at her stepfather and storms out back to the farm. However, on her way to the farm she discovers the pony stabled on her stepfather's property, and overcome with more rage, she runs straight back to the mansion, grabs a carving knife, and stabs Maurice in the chest with it.

Yeah, so our lovely main character attempts to kill her stepfather, gets put away until she's 18, and Buffoon gets sold because his owner dies, and Maurice lives because Tessa is a weakling and didn't stab him harder or enough. In the chest. With a knife.

So, Tessa's all forlorn that she didn't kill Maurice. Then her jockey friend, Tom, visits her and he finds Buffoon and she gets out of jail/the insane asylum, and is all forlorn again because Buffoon has cataracts. So she gets her mom to give her money for cataract surgery for the horse and then he can see again and Maurice beats up her mom when he finds out, so her mom leaves him and starts to have sex with this other guy who's actually nice and they go to the Grand National again and she rides Buffoon and they of course win. (That was the last half of the book, for anyone wondering.) And Tessa and Tom kiss, because there was this whole "can she love anyone besides a horse" plot strung around in there. And I think she's, like, 22 by the end of the book. I'm pretty sure there was another four year skip in time, but I was wasn't paying close enough attention. That whole bloody incident midway through kinda derailed me.

Points:

• While I was reading this thing, I kept convincing myself it couldn't have possibly been published in 1999. Really, it reads like it was published in 1960.

• Whenever they talk about a horse being put down, they always say the horse is going to be shot. Again, I couldn't help thinking...1999? What? Are the English still shooting horses when they break down on racetracks, or is this just something they say? Are they delightfully clinging to old phrases or what?

• At one point one of the other exercise boys says something remarkably true and yet not totally positive about Buffoon and Tessa throws a curry comb at his head and cuts up his cheek. Everyone remarks that Tessa should really grow up. Yeah...and here I keep thinking that someone should have noticed the signs.

• So, Maurice really is sort of evil. But it's in a totally out of nowhere and ridiculous way. Like...his horse doesn't perform well on the track so he wants the trainer to shut it up in its stall without exercise, food, or water for a week. The trainer refuses to do this, so Maurice has the horse shot. Really, yes, this is evil behavior and we're supposed to hate Maurice for this just as much as Tessa does but I don't buy it. It's stupid. It's like what a twelve-year-old fangirl would dream up.
  

• Tessa also desperately wants her mother to leave Maurice, but she doesn't ever say this in a positive way. It's just screaming, waving around knives, and yelling. Then she has to remark wildly on why her mother is just so stupid. Supportive! And the thing is, this happens mostly when Tessa is sixteen. So it's obvious someone is still a spoiled brat with no concept of the real world.
  

• Also, I must say that the cutesy cursive chapter headings are really out of place in this book.
  

Amusingly enough, if you go to the Amazon page for this book it gets mostly five stars. I can't decide why this is. Perhaps I'm not giving it a fair shot, but I really could not stand Tessa. While the book improves after she gives up the really unnerving urge to slice people to shreds and bathe in their blood, by the time you get there you feel like you've been through hell and back. I also might be a little irked that I accidentally picked up a book with Irish people involved, but for some reason I think it's more the fact that Tessa is a raging psychopath and the story is the most unrealistic of Thoroughbred plots, only on steroids.

Watch out! The Arizona Kid is becoming a man.

The Arizona Kid
by Ron Koertge
Published: 1988, 2005

Guys, I'm so excited. This is the first time I get to review a book for this blog in which I get to mention sex, drugs, cursing, alcohol, underage drinking, and gambling! It's like everything our beloved Thoroughbred characters would shrink from in horror while screaming "Unclean! Unclean!" This is precisely why I loved it. I mean, sure, I have a huge soft spot in my heart for our darling girls with their emotionally and physically stunted mindsets, but you can only take so much, you know?

From the moment sixteen-year-old Billy steps off the train in Tucson, he knows this will be a summer unlike any he's seen in small-town Bradleyville, Missouri. For starters, he's staying with his cool gay uncle, who has managed to get him a job at the racetrack caring for horses. Still, Billy doesn't expect the horseracing world to be quite as rough and tumble as this — toiling side by side with a macho survivalist and falling hard for the feisty, romance-shy "exercise girl" Cara Mae. With his trademark fast-paced dialogue filled with wit and compassion, Ron Koertge tells the tale of an insecure teen who discovers that gaining stature involves more than Stetsons and boots — and that lessons on love and manhood come from the places you least expect.

We've also got a few other firsts thrown in for this blog -- the first male author, the first openly homosexual character, and the first instance of first person narrative. All of which is wildly refreshing. I am positively overflowing with giddiness brought on by new experiences!

Anyhoo, I'll just settle down and get to the book. I've included that The Arizona Kid was first written in 1988, but since it was republished in 2005 certain popular icons were clearly edited out and replaced with more current icons like the Dixie Chicks and Shaq. Who knows what was there previously. Probably Cyndi Lauper and Wilt Chamberlain. The only way you can seriously tell it was written in the late 80's is how the AIDS virus is treated during the entire novel. When AIDS popped up on the screen in 1981 I was an infant, but by the time the freaking out was at a high point I was old enough to remember and get the lectures on how you can and cannot contract HIV. Sitting on toilet seats that were subject to the grime of the general public? Dandy! Spitting on people for no reason? Totally not okay! (Although you'd think spitting would be discouraged in general, my era had to make HIV as easy to contract as Mono, so the message of politeness = not spitting on someone had a more urgent message attached.)

HIV/AIDS is the hot topic of this book mainly because our main character, Billy, is staying with his uncle Wes, who is gay and happens to be going through the emotional turmoil of watching his friends die and attempt to not die from the illness. We'll get to that later. First, to Billy and his problems, which mainly boil down to the fact that he's short and unsure of what he wants to do with himself and a virgin. His parents have him trucked off to Tuscon for the summer, and his uncle Wes has set up a job for him at the local racetrack. Billy thinks he might want to be a vet, hence the racetrack job. Anyway, Billy is kind of awkward starting out and is pretty self-conscious about his height. He even wears vertically striped shirts in an attempt to look taller, which fails time and time again.

Wes is pretty awesome. He's one of those perfect guys that gets hit on by everyone, is apparently a neat freak despite being an artist (perhaps it's just my experience, but artists are never neat freaks), and gets about 80% of the fantastic lines in the book. He knows this Jack guy from his business and sets up Billy's job as one of Jack's grooms. This leads us to the racetrack, where we meet Lew, his girlfriend Abby, and Cara Mae, one of Jack's exercise riders. Lew is one of those guys who thinks World War III is going to break out at any minute, and is totally prepared for the apocalypse at the drop of a hat. His mother is essentially permanently stoned, and his father is insane. No, really. Lew's dad, Edgar, has the astonishing ability to drop down from the ceiling unannounced, start screaming military terminology at the top of his lungs, and then starts to shoot random objects with blanks from his machine gun. I kid you not. Edgar is reason enough to read the book.

Anyway, Billy meets Cara Mae and his teenage boy hormones kick in full force. They sort of get together during night races at the track, where he's helping out with this filly called Moon's Medicine. After the filly loses tremendously, they go out and get some beer and park somewhere. While Lew and Abby basically have sex in the front cab of the truck, Billy and Cara wander off somewhere and get acquainted in a lovely platonic way that ends Billy back at home with his uncle giving him condoms. Best to be prepared! And all that. Wes also gives Billy these boots he doesn't wear (Wes went through some shopping addiction that left him with multitudes of things he doesn't use, all for fear he will get AIDS and die) and Billy buys a Stetson and basically builds his cocoon while he waits to emerge as a fully grown adult male.

Luckily for Billy, it's basically hot as hell in Tuscon, and he offers to take Cara to the water park in the city. Cara is not financially well off, and her swim suit is a little stretched out, offering Billy all sorts of opportunities to develop erections he can be embarrassed by. Somehow he manages to hide all of this and lays the foundation for his relationship with Cara. Meanwhile, Moon's Medicine does much better in her next night race because she's developed a loving relationship with a chicken. Only after the race the resident antagonist, enemy trainer Fletcher, comes and takes her away to his barn because her owners are pricks and jumped ship. This results in a wonderful physical confrontation between Lew, Billy, and Fletcher's muscle named Grif. Grif basically wins, they take the filly, and Cara gets all attentive to Billy. Which equals sex. So Billy gets to put those condoms to use and starts to break out of his cocoon.

Then Moon's Medicine dies. This spins into motion our second half of the book, which pits Fletcher and Grif against Lew and Billy in this plot that seems to come straight out of The Sweet Running Filly and its sequels (that I have not read yet, but this would be right in there, I am sure). Pissed off that he's being blamed for Moon's death, Fletcher gets all confrontational with Lew and Billy, which winds up with them betting on these two new horses. Jack is getting a maiden filly named The Dark Mirage and Fletcher is getting a filly named French Bred (ha ha). So, Lew basically gets them into this stupid bet about which horse will win and there's a thousand dollars at stake. The Dark Mirage is sort of crazy, requiring lots of attention and, as it turns out, watermelon. I don't understand the watermelon, but I guess it's her comfort food or something. Only it doesn't really work well because Billy and Cara just wind up taking her out to this private training facility so she can work in peace.

Meanwhile, Wes is going through the death of one of his friends, gets all drunk, and then has to be tested again for some reason and goes to a gay bar and, you know, Billy takes this all in stride before one of Wes's flamboyant friends hits on him in a most amusing fashion. Which I will now briefly transcribe:

"Who is this macho morsel?"
"I live here."
"This isn't an outfit, is it?" (Strokes Billy's sleeve.) "You've been -- pardon the expression -- working."
"Look, all I want to do is go to bed, okay?"
"I'm yours!"
"Stop handling me, man. I mean it!"
"I love it when they're stern."

It's sort of like a Pepe Le Pew cartoon.

Anyway, then we've got some drama about having to go home in the midst of all this bet business. Billy is angsting over telling Cara he loves her and vice versa, resulting in dramatics and a fight that they get over while he guards The Dark Mirage from any nefarious deeds. Although then Fletcher and Grif show up, totally unprepared for whatever they were going to do. This is probably because Fletcher is drunk. They basically yell a little, Grif manages to get Fletcher back to their truck, and then Cara and Billy have sex in a stall.

The Dark Mirage beats French Bred in their race (although I don't think she wins the race overall), Billy and Cara manage to bring their relationship to a suitable end that may or may not continue past the summer (I mean, come on, they're teenagers, and the book realizes that), Billy decides to come back to the University of Arizona for racetrack management after high school, Cara goes up to Phoenix for another race meet with her dad, and Billy goes home a man.

It is remarkably satisfying, although the very end is sort of plunked down there and feels unexpectedly sudden. Billy is a sweet kid, and his story is pretty amusing. I was a little disappointed in the plot twist halfway through with this bet and how Jack just sort of let Billy and Cara deal with The Dark Mirage. It was like a tarnished Thoroughbred plot, to a certain extent. However, I would still happily recommend the book to anyone.

If Wishes Were Horses, Nobody Would Ever Walk Again

And now that it seems that my Happy Fun Fire Time Adventure™ is over, and Mitch has been returned to the blissful comforts of home after having been evacuated in the middle of the night nearly two weeks ago (hey, it's drama right out of Melanie's Last Ride!) I have another book review. I know, I know, I swore it would be Shadow Horse, and that's read, and everything, but I'm just having the damnedest time writing the bloody review. I think it's because I sort of liked the book, and am now having trouble even trying to rip it to shreds, but it can't write nice either. It's slow going. So I picked up an old favorite at the library the other day, and thought I'd run a fast review on that since it's a quick and easy read, and the end of the book meshes so well with our Happy Fun Time Fire Adventure™ that it just seems more appropriate. Anyway... enjoy!

If Wishes Were Horses
by Jean Slaughter Doty
Published: October 1984

I grew up with Jean Slaughter Doty books; they had ponies in them, so of course from a very early age, those were the books my parents found at the library for me. Now that I think about it, looking back, I think my parents were trying to prepare me for the future realization that not everything was cookies and cream with horses. Jean Slaughter Doty wrote books that were realistic, brutally frank and blunt at times, without much of the sunshine and rainbows and golden butterfly farts from Magikal Gypsy Vanner asses that's often so prevalent in other horse books. Oh, don't get me wrong, there is a sprinkling of sunshine and rainbows because good things happen, but at the same time, Doty's books have bad things that happen too. Because that's just a fact of life. And sometimes, there is no happily ever after.

I've always really loved the cover of If Wishes Were Horses (the hardback at least, it's the only copy I've ever seen, so I don't know if there are different covers) because it was just very well done. It sort of had a watercolor feel to it; like paint daubs in Photoshop, which I always liked. The detail is there, but it's not such needle-sharp detail that it spoils the big picture; and the two little chestnut fillies running on the cover around the two girls is just very balanced and cute. They're such teeny-tiny foals, but I love their color and chrome. They're how I imagine Secretariat looked as a baby, only gallon-sized rather than pint-sized. ☺

Thirteen-year-old Stephany Reed has grown up on Thunder Rock Farm, where for many years her family has bred and raised Thoroughbred racehorses. And in the last few months since her father's death, she and her older sister, Camilla, have kept the farm going on their own.

Caring for the broodmares and stallions and the newborn foals is hard work but satisfying, and the two girls begin to hope that they will be able to pay off the debts that threaten Thunder Rock's future. Then suddenly, disaster strikes, endangering the very lives of the horses they love...

My only gripe is that Doty seems to have gone the Mary Sue route, and chosen the more (shall we say) exotic pronunciation of Stephanie and Camilla has a very high-minded name, but I guess the Reeds could have gotten away with it being monied-rich and all. But other than that, I've got no issues. It's not sunshine and rainbows and magikal butterfly farts -- they've got to pay off their debts or it's bye-bye "happily ever after."

Set in the Virginia countryside, If Wishes Were Horses begins on a dark stormy night at 3 A.M when Stephany awakens in the barn office at a phone call from Jimmy Connor, the next door neighbor. As an interesting bit of back story, Jimmy grew up with beef cattle, but decided horses were a lot cooler (and probably didn't shit and eat as much) than cattle, so the minute his folks took off for that big retirement place everyone goes to (Arizona, who'da thunk... why do people retire to Arizona anyway? It's hot there in the summer.) Jimmy ditched the critters that moo and picked up critters that neighed. So he's a racehorse trainer, and after giving Stephany some grief about her older sister being at a dance and not at home, he demands a horse. And it's funny how he demands it, so I'll quote it:

"Then you have to help me. I need a horse. Right away."

I sighed. "Jimmy, you know we've got all kinds of horses. What particular horse have you got in mind? What kind of a horse is a three-o'clock-in-the-morning horse?"

"The mare. The tall gray one with the ears."

That mare turns out to be Rosie, and we're treated to a trip down Memory Lane with Stephany. Rosie, being registered as Roses Red, with Bold Ruler on top, and Mahmoud on the bottom, you'd think she'd be a hell of a racehorse. But nah, she can't outrun a fat man going downhill, and thus becomes the perfect playtoy for two girls growing up on a racehorse farm, when they've been forbidden from going near the racehorses. That bit always kind of struck me as surprising, maybe because I got used to the Thoroughbred series afterwards where kids were expected to pitch in and help, but looking back, maybe it makes sense -- the racehorses were the business, and Rosie was the toy.

So anyway, Jimmy needs Rosie for some mysterious errand, and Stephany says she'll have her ready as soon as he runs his van over. She then goes to look in on the three mares in foal, two outside mares -- one being a daughter of Secretariat -- and their Princequillo mare, Pamela who is the only mare they own that's in foal. And then she wraps Rosie's legs, while giving us another trip down Memory Lane about how everything went to shit so easily. That back when both the Reed parents were alive, everything was swell -- they were rich, they were happy, their horses were selling. And then Mumsy kicked the bucket without warning, and Dear Daddy sort of lost the will to live, so the girls closed down the house as more of their servants were leaving, and eventually everything started going to pot in a social sense. But hey, as long as they had the horses, life was jolly, because they never failed to take care of the horses, even if there was dust a foot thick on the stairway banisters.

Well, as long as they were rich too. But when that started tickling away, because Daddy Dear, started selling some of the best broodmares cheap, and sending other mares to crapass studs who couldn't produce their way out of a feed bag, which sort of then means that the foals were shit, so nobody really wanted to buy them. So of course the farm hit some financial upheaval. And then they got lucky with a racehorse they named Glory Now, who was out of the super mare, Pamela, but had a shitass sire. And despite this, he managed to look impressive enough that Mr. Reed decides to hold on to him, thinking they'll make the Derby with him.

We then continue our trip down Stephany's Memory Lane with the saga of Glory Now, who managed to pull a Smarty Jones (or a Bold Ruler) and nearly kill himself before he even made it into racing. So he had to sit out most of the big two-year-old races, but managed to look impressive enough in slow workouts that on slow news days when there was nothing to write about, the farm got some publicity. And Glory Now is apparently a poser, a wanna-be celebrity who looked hot in the morning, but threw a clunker in the afternoon. Nevertheless, he manages to win his maiden race at first asking, beating a bunch of worn-out tired nobodies. But then Jimmy tells Cam and Stephany that "that fancy colt can't run fast enough to keep himself warm" and warns the girls that he needs to tell their dad that Glory Now is a bunch of junk (can we say overhyped!) Glory Now solves the problem neatly by getting one of those 24-hour colic issues that is resolved thanks to quick intervention of the vets, but it's all Jimmy needs to send the colt back to the farm, with the possiblity of "racing next year." (You know, the kind of excuses that racehorse owners these days give for retiring their horses as stallion prospects -- Doty was amazingly ahead of her time!)

So then Things Just Get Worse.™ Papa Reed hasn't sent many -- if any -- mares to any stallions, so the farm is looking at a dry year, and Cam decides not to go back to college so she can stay and run the farm. The farm continues to slide, and Cam even has to take a part-time job. Glory Now looks good, and Dad Reed continues to hold out hope. But then his heart gives out, and the girls are left orphans with a farm, and horses, and mounting debts. So much for life insurance!

And thus, we return to the present, when Jimmy arrives with his van, and whisks Rosie off on her mysterious middle-of-the-early-morning journey, and Stephany goes to check on the mares only to realize that "Oh shit!" the chestnut mare is foaling! And she's all alone. But then Cam arrives, and the girls get to work. In Doty's blunt way, she details what's going on with the foal, and doesn't really mince words. Yes, they have to stick their arm up the back end of the mare, she's blunt and honest about that. But anyway, it turns out the mare is having twins! What! Nobody bothered to y'know, ultrasound her or palpate her before she arrived at the farm? I really kind of blame the owners there, rather than Cam or Stephany, and I suppose it's entirely possible that even with ultrasound, one wouldn't know the mare was carrying twins. But the girls foal her out; pretty graphically detailed birth scene from Doty (the only other one I remember her writing about was Mokey foaling in Winter Pony) and both foals are born. One filly is quickly on her feet, but the weaker one seems to have flipped the proverbial bird at the world, and is just lying there, trying to die or something. It's not really sunshine and rainbows for the two girls because it turns out the other two mares are also foaling, and the brown mare is freaked out at her foal. Bully! So they resort to restraining her long enough to get her foal to nurse, and then it's back to the twin foals to try and get the weaker one to nurse. The weaker foal is kind of having a rough life, but Stephany feeds her, and she goes to sleep, but Stephany freaks out like ninja thinking she was dead.

The vet finally comes, and everyone is OK, although Cam has to report that she called the mare's owners who were really really pissed off that she had twins, and felt that the weaker one should have died. Well, clearly those absentee owners are more concerned about the money (bit of advice for them: Make sure the mare's next foal is not part of a twin-set, mmkay.) But the girls have a chance to relax, and Cam tells Stephany about the dance, and her sort-of-boyfriend Cliff. Cliff is apparently your typical young wealthy scion; fast cars, good-looking and shallow. And he wants to shag Cam. But his selfishness pisses her off, and she pretty much tries to ditch the box of orchids he sends. But Cam shouldn't get too mad at him, who knows, she might need him in the future.

As it turns out, the bank has sent a final warning. Foreclosure is imminent. And it's not enough that they're taking the farm too; the horses are all going to go bye-bye too. So Camilla heads to the bank. The banker is a long-time friend of their father, surely he'll understand! Won't he? (Or is he going to make Cam doing something really sleezy in exchange?) And well, Mr. Banker is a douchebag. Really. I mean, he was all happy to party with the family when they threw their pre-yearling sales shindings, and sit in their box at the racetrack during big races, but now that they're poor ... he's gonna fugdabouit, and demand they pay up ... OR ELSE!

And then the suits come; the people from the bank. And poor Stephany is home alone for it. And they're rich, and don't want to walk in the mud. So they act cold, and mean and stuff. Boo! And poor Stephany is home alone again two days later when the bloodstock agents arrive. But at least these guys aren't jerks, they walk in the mud, and look at the twin fillies and act all shiny and happy. But they do of course, appraise the value of the Thunder Rock horses, and then point out that one is missing! Gasp! It's Rosie, and wherever can she be? Luckily, Stephany remembers a Christmas morning a few years ago, and sneers at the bloodstock agents, because Rosie is belongs to the girls, and not the farm, so therefore, she can keep Rosie. Of course, the bloodstock guys aren't jerks, so they seem nice about this, and one man says it's nice if they could keep her, since they're losing everything else.

Cam goes off to see the family attorney, and it seems that Mr. Lawyer is kind of skeevy because he tries to feel Cam up each chance he gets during this lunch meeting (and him a married man!) and Cam nearly takes his hand off before she tells him to get lost. But good things happen because Rosie is home, and Cam and Jimmy go off to dinner. But good things do not last, because the fire alarm goes ape-shit, and Stephany is home alone. Woe! She has to get the mares out of the barn, and other horses too. Glory Now tries to rip her face off, and she gets his door open, and moves along. She gets the farm's last stallion out, and he tears off into the night. And at last the fire engine arrives, and Cam and Jimmy.

And because this is not a sunshine and rainbows book, four horses have died from smoke inhalation, and one of them turns out to be Glory Now. Stephany goes off to look for Rondelay, the stallion, and finds that he got into the broodmare pasture, so he's clearly in seventh heaven with his harem. Jimmy takes in the horses, and has paid special attention to Rosie. The bank sends a fire inspector and an insurance agent who practically accuse Stephany of smoking in the hay, and that it was all a set-up. Cam goes ballistic on them, and thus they must sheepishly admit that the fire started in the tack room, and could thus be ruled out as an accident.

Cliff calls, and tries to get some loving from Cam by sweeping her off to an island in the Caribbean. She tells him to fuck off in a nice way, and goes back to work. The broodmare barn is reopened, and Dr. Bailey, the vet, comes to check horses, and tell the girls that he's bought the twin fillies. And the bank sale happens, and horses are sold. Good-bye, farewell, no happily ever afters. And Cam sends Stephany out on a ride with Rosie, and Stephany brings her over to Jimmy's barn where she will now live.

The girls get an apartment in town, Stephany gets a job working with Jimmy's yearlings, and life goes on. And then at last, a brief bit of wonderful news! It seems that an exceptional racehorse by Northern Dancer was recently killed following his syndication in Europe. He went nuts on the plane, and they had to put him down. And Jimmy reveals that he had connections with the colt's syndicate, and they needed a test mare for him. And thus, we learn of his mysterious reason for taking Rosie on a journey. And the best news is, she's in foal! Hurrah! And Cam and Jimmy leave the resturant holding hands, double hurrah!

Points of Interest:

• Doty seems to namedrop a lot with famous racehorses. Thunder Rock is foaling out a Secretariat daughter, they own a daughter of Princequillo, Rosie has Bold Ruler anfd Mahmoud in her pedigree, Rosie was bred to a son of Northern Dancer, Rondelay is a son of Round Table, and there's a yearling son of Sir Ivor on the property.

• Cam and Stephany really economize when they're forced to. They close up all of the barns on the property except for the main one. They live in small maid's rooms off the kitchen, and let the rest of the house go.

• Rosie has floppy ears and makes popping noises with her lips. I think that's cute. An old arthritic mare at our barn flaps her lower lip which is really droopy, and makes popping noises.

• There's a major emphasis on the fact that Thunder Rock is a Thoroughbred breeding farm, and that like many farms that breed to race, while they might start yearlings under saddle there, the majority of the training takes place at the race track. Which is very typical of the racing world.

• Thunder Rock's silks are blue and white. And the farm is in Virginia. Hmm. Meadow Stable, anyone? The way Cam took over running the place does remind me of the way Penny Chenery took over running Meadow Stable from her ailing father.

• Doty seems to make a point that Glory Now is absolutely a morning glory horse; that he runs amazingly well in the mornings, but can't make up the ground in the afternoons. And that one personal unrealistically believes in him, but everyone else is more practical.

• At least Glory Now is a media hype, and Doty isn't afraid to make him into a pathetic racehorse.

So there we have If Wishes Were Horses. I've always loved the book. Maybe because it wasn't sunshines and rainbows and butterflies. Yeah, there was a barn fire, and yeah, the bank foreclosed on the farm and the two girls lost everything -- their parents, and their home and their horses -- but they still had each other, and it looks like they have Jimmy (well, Cam does anyway) and Rosie, and Rosie's going to have a once-in-a-lifetime foal. It's not really a happy ending because a happy ending would have somehow managed to keep the girls on the farm, but it's not a sad ending either. It's life, that life has good days, and bad days, and life goes on, no matter what happens.

So now, I'll try and work on the review for Shadow Horse, and then finally maybe I'll go back to Thoroughbred. But maybe one of the NewGen books rather than an Ashleigh book for now.