SUN DUST
By
A standard girl-boy-horse story with sixteen-year-old Laurie, lame from a car accident, going to live on her grandparents' ranch where neighbor David, eighteen, does a crack job of training horses. Besides breaking in the wild, ill-reputed Sun Dust that Laurie chooses for her own, David painstakingly trains Laurie to compete for Rodeo Queen against pretty, accomplished Randa, who's possessive of David and doesn't miss a chance to put Laurie down. By the end Laurie has bravely rescued Sun Dust from a stable fire, performed superbly in the rodeo, won David's interest, learned to try (and succeed) despite her handicap, and even got her world-traveling correspondent father, absent and missed throughout, settled down on the ranch. Negligible.