Honest, tough-minded and beautiful.
Learning to train horses in the precise, artful discipline of dressage, a troubled teenage boy gains self-understanding.
When Michael Ross, who has just aged out of foster care, hears his social worker’s suggestion that he work for a horse trainer, he agrees despite the lack of pay; already in trouble with the law, he has few options. It soon becomes clear that Michael—resentful, balky and unaware of his limitations—needs more training than the horses. He yearns to ride with accomplished ease but struggles to understand distant, sarcastic dressage trainer Erik Sarmento. Sarmento grew up with an abusive father and is now a hard, isolated man devoid of sentiment, but as a teacher, he applies a precise toughness; fellow apprentice Peter explains to Michael, “Me, he tries to make me lose my temper, because he knows damned well it’s hard for me to do it. He makes you control yours because that’s what’s hardest for you.” With difficulties and setbacks, Michael begins to understand that training is about understanding and changing one’s own nature, not the horse’s. In her debut novel, Feldman—a trainer and rider for more than 60 years and also a psychiatric social worker—makes excellent use of her background to anchor this psychologically astute coming-of-age story in the equestrian world. Sarmento’s training philosophy, which echoes that of the great horseman William Steinkraus, purports that horses are, of course, much stronger and faster than humans, but are, despite their strength, yielding and forgiving. This view, the reader discovers through fascinating scenes of dressage training, is much more complicated, demanding and deeply satisfying than Michael’s self-serving fantasies of power over horses. Seeing Michael come to this understanding is quietly thrilling.
Honest, tough-minded and beautiful.Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1479318438
Page Count: 404
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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