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The Hearts of Horses

by Molly Gloss

After the compelling read that was Conversations with a Prince, I was in the mood to read more about horses, so pulled all the books I could find off my TBR shelves. Unfortunately, The Hearts of Horses couldn\’t stand up to the previous read, but it was a good story regardless. Just not as in-depth as I wanted, not as much about horses as I wanted, so rather pale in comparison.

It\’s the story of a solitary woman who lives during WWI era, filling in a ranch job left vacant by men gone to war. She rides from farm to farm breaking young and untamed horses to saddle. I was intrigued by the premise and wanted to read more about the psychology, physical work and human-animal communication involved in teaching horses, particularly since the woman in this story, Martha, stood out for more than just doing what was then considered a man\’s job. She also had unconventional methods, gentling the horses via communication with body language rather than forcing them into submission. Reminded me a lot of The Man Who Listens to Horses by Monty Roberts (which I can\’t believe I haven\’t written about yet).

What I got instead was very much a story about community, and how people work together. Martha is not much of a \”people person,\” she prefers the company of the horses. But her job entails riding daily between several ranches in order to work with a string of unbroken horses, one after another (to fit the most work into a day). So gradually she becomes involved with those around her; the struggling ranch owners, lonely wives, hired hands all come to know and respect her. Some are bitter, some cruel to the animals, others want to confide in her. She helps out when she feels it is needed- several times rescuing animals that have fallen over roadsides towards rushing water, helping to find lost stock, riding at a moment\’s notice for the doctor. A certain level of human suffering rose out of the book into my consciousness; medical care was primitive and limited; one character was dying of cancer and there was literally no treatment available (aside from the option of a crude, costly and ultimately ineffective surgery). In another ironic situation, a drunkard\’s family fell suddenly ill after eating improperly home-canned food. Martha drove the woman and children to the hospital, then rode off the find the husband and inform him what had happened to his family. She did find him, but he was drunk and found sport in frightening her horse off the road. She and her horse were injured, she had no chance (or desire I imagine) to speak to him, and he arrived home, ate the same canned food and died alone, all unknowing. I could not get that scene out of my head for a long time.

That\’s just a little bit of what was in this book. There are a lot more interesting stories about the small community. Stories of women, young and old, filling in for their missing men. Of newcomers hoping to work the land and finding disappointment. Of mismanagement and greed, of sacrifice and charity. There\’s a slowly-growing romance between Martha and one of the hired hands she meets, that was satisfactory. There\’s also the effects of the war and its news on everyone, and the persecution against a certain ranching family of German descent. But overall I wanted more about the horses, so it was just a good read to me, nothing more.

Rating: 3/5 289 pages, 2007

more opinions:
Floor to Ceiling Books
Blogging for a Good Book
Shut Up, Heathcliff

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Historical Fiction, Western

The Secret Life of Cowboys

by Tom Groneberg

This book is one that grew on me. Don\’t judge The Secret Life of Cowboys by its cover or its title, because neither seem a good fit to me. It\’s a thoughtful, frank memoir of a man searching for a new life, trying to live his dream. Groneberg has always wanted to be a cowboy, to live close to cattle and horses, to love the land. He gets a job leading trail rides for tourists, then works as a hired hand on a ranch, and finally gets his dream- a ranch of his very own. But all along he struggles to fit in, to learn skills kids around him have mastered, to understand simple things that no one bothers to explain because they assume it\’s common knowledge. He struggles at managing the ranch. The ending surprised me. It\’s not all happy. Love for the big open skies, wide fields and animals shines through the pages, but so does the heartache at difficulties and failings. I kept thinking of Jenna as I read this book; she\’s another person who had a dream to live a life different than the one she was raised with, and just went for it. In some ways their stories are quite similar.

rated: 3/5 …….. 257 pages, 2003

more opinions at:
Buddies in the Saddle
Cataloger\’s Reading List

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Bios / Memoirs, Current Reads, Western

Christmas Horse

by Glenn Balch

Another old but good horse story from Glenn Balch (but still doesn\’t live up to my favorite.) This one is about a teenage boy on a ranch who admires the wild horses that run in the hills. He feels certain there\’s some good blood in those wild horses, and has his eye on a particular black colt. But his father adamantly claims none of them are worth the effort to catch and train- they\’re just loco, or their spirits would break at being caught and tamed. Ben gets his wish however, when one Christmas he returns home from school (boarding in the city with his aunt to attend high school) and finds that the black colt was caught just for him and \”green-broke\” by the ranch hand.

Ecstatic at owning the black colt, Ben\’s joy soon turns to dismay when he realizes he won\’t be able to train the horse himself when he\’s away at school. Eventually he finds a solution in boarding his horse at a nearby riding stable in town, but that doesn\’t quite solve his problem. Ben has to work in the stables to pay for his horse\’s keep, and with schoolwork as well, there\’s little time left to ride his horse. Compounding the issue is his embarrassment when a girl he admires at school finds out he works mucking out stalls. At first she doesn\’t believe he has a wild horse, then she doesn\’t believe Ben can ride it. He\’s determined to prove himself to her as a horseman, and finally gets his chance in a spectacular way.

This book was a slow start. Nice enough, but not very interesting until it got to the part where he was trying to juggle school, work and horse-training, as well as impress the girl. Later in the story Ben takes his horse back to the ranch for the summer, where he moves on from just teaching it to be obedient to commands and introduces the horse to ropes and cattle, intending to make it a skilled cow pony. All the while he\’s anxious to show his father that this wild horse amounted to something good.

It\’s a pretty good story, if you like horses. I got a chuckle out of the horse\’s name: Inkpot. Ben\’s sister named it after it was caught, before he came home for Christmas and had a chance to name it himself. He didn\’t like the name at first, but it stuck. I thought it was funny.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 252 pages, 1949

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Fiction, Current Reads, Juvenile Fic, Western

The Wild Mare

by Glenn Balch

A cream-colored filly is born to a wild mare in the Idaho scrub, and on her very first day of life, looses her mother. Luckily Jim, a young ranch hand comes along and rescues her, raising her on cattle milk at the ranch station. When the filly is only five months old, an accident separates her from the only man she knows and trusts, and she ends up running off with the wild horses. The next time she meets mankind, they\’re strangers who see her as just another beautiful wild horse, one to be caught and broken in for profit. \”Flax\” spends several years evading cowboys and mingling with other wild horses, until finally she crosses paths with Jim once more. He recognizes her immediately, but she\’s only learned to fear men in the meantime. Can Jim win her trust again?

This book was first published with the title The Flaxy Mare. I got it from Book Mooch, because I was curious to read more stories by Glenn Balch. But this one didn\’t hold my interest as well. For that I had to give it just a 2; simply because I didn\’t enjoy it much, and often found my mind wandering. It\’s a nice enough story, though.

Rating: 2/5…….. 153 pages, 1967

anyone else posted about this book? I\’ll add your link here.

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Animals Fiction, Current Reads, Juvenile Fic, Western

Horse of Two Colors

by Glen Balch

I traded for this book on Book Mooch because I have long loved another by the same author, Buck Wild and wanted to read more of his work. They\’re not easy to find, even though Balch wrote about thirty horse stories for young readers. Most are no longer in print.

Horse of Two Colors is an imaginative story about how Appaloosa horses were first introduced to Native Americans. When the book opens, two young men from different tribes are making their escape from a Spanish settlement where they\’ve been held captive. In a bold daring move, they steal two horses to take home to their respective people, one a striking two-colored stallion, its hindquarters white with black spots. The boys have never seen a horse like him before. They don\’t know much about horses, as their people have just recently started to use them, and only for pack animals. Together the boys face difficulties of the long journey home: how to handle the horses, doubts about whether they can be ridden, eluding the pursuing Spaniards and finding enough food as they pass through some desolate country. More problems arise when Indians from an enemy tribe show up, fiercely determined to catch the horses for themselves. The journey is not without tragedy, and in the end one of the boys returns home to people who have almost forgotten him, feeling something of a failure. But the ending has a pleasant surprise that makes his hardships and losses worthwhile.

My rating scale isn\’t fine enough to differentiate, but I found this book a better read than the recent Wild Horse Running, it was more creative and the writing more enjoyable. I am even more determined now to find all the books I can written by Glenn Balch. He really is a great storyteller.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 170 pages, 1969

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Fiction, Current Reads, Juvenile Fic, Western

Wild Horse Running

by Sam Savitt

I picked this book up (from a thrift shop) because of the illustrations. I recognized the lively, sketchy style immediately and wondered if it was the same illustrator who had made drawings for an old childhood favorite of mine, Summer Pony by Jean Slaughter Doty. So I brought it home. It was. In this case, the illustrator is also the author. After finishing The World According to Horses, I was in the mood to read another horsey book, and this was it.

Wild Horse Running is the story of a gray mustang stallion. Like a lot of other horse books I read as a kid, it starts out with the horse being born free on the range, growing up learning how to survive the elements and avoid predators. But when man comes along, there is no escape. Our gray hero, Cloud, is eventually captured and because he fights so hard, becomes a rodeo horse. A thunderstorm helps him escape the rodeo and he runs back to the range, only to be caught again, this time by a rancher\’s son who finds him injured on the ground after being chased by helicopters. This time Cloud is easily tamed by the boy, as he can\’t fight while injured, and is already used to rope and halter from being in the rodeos. But he still longs for his freedom…

I couldn\’t help noticing elements that were really similar in this book to other horse stories I\’ve read. The wild horse gentling after being cared for while injured and sick brought back scenes from My Friend Flicka. The simple storyline showing a wild horse growing up, being captured, and always wanting his freedom again was very like Buck, Wild. And the rodeo elements reminded me a lot of parts of When the Legends Die. This book wasn\’t quite as well-written as any of those, but I still enjoyed it as a quick read. I also appreciated the historical elements; parts of the story address how wild horses in the Pryor Mountains were being rounded up and auctioned off to dog-food factories, until people rallied to save them.

Rating: 3/5 …….. 126 pages, 1973

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Fiction, Juvenile Fic, Past Reads, Western

Buck, Wild

by Glenn Balch

This is one of those books I read over and over again from the elementary school library when I was a kid. I even remember to this day which shelf it was kept on. It\’s the story of a wild mustang, beginning at his birth and following various adventures as he scrapes out a life with his wild band in the scub county of Idaho around the Snake River. The little horse looses his mother early, but gets partly adopted by another mare with a young foal, and grows up strong and free. He has to learn his place among the wild horses- which mares are friendly, how much he can pester the stallion, how far he can wander, etc. The dynamics change as he grows older until as a yearling he is ousted by the stallion and must make his way alone with a few other young bachelors. He dodges coyotes and cowhands, lives alongside antelope and wild burros. Eventually a rancher notices the wild horse, now a young stallion, and determines to catch him in order to use for stud to improve his own stockhorses. Shut up in a corral, for the first time in his life the wild horse knows what it is to be free of danger and well-fed. But our equine hero will never submit to man\’s hand, he has a strong will and burning desire to be free… Buck, Wild is a wonderful story for any young horse lover. The author has written a number of books about horses, but this is the only one I\’ve read so far. I mean to remedy that someday.

Rating: 4/5 …….. 136 pages, 1976

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Fiction, Juvenile Fic, Past Reads, Western

Fire on the Mountain

by Edward Abbey

Back in June I read two books by Edward Abbey, one I really liked and the other was kinda lame. Here again in Fire on the Mountain I\’ve found a book I really enjoyed. It\’s the story of an old man and his ranch in New Mexico, hard country where the cattle barely find enough to stay alive. But the old man loves the wild desert country, and the book is full of beautiful descriptions of fiery sunsets, heat-shimmering vistas, close encounters with rattlesnakes and glimpses of the mountain lion. His ranch isn\’t too prosperous, but he is content to live there in the solitude and open spaces until he dies. Until the government shoulders in, moving ranchers off the land to add it to the White Sands Missile Range, where rockets and bombs are tested. One by one neighboring ranchers cave in or are bought out, but the old man digs in his heels and refuses to leave, against all persuasion by the law and threats from jeeps of soldiers. What makes things more interesting is that it\’s all told from the viewpoint of the visiting grandson, a feisty kid who\’s soaked up all his grandpa\’s opinions and eager to be part of a siege in the old man\’s cabin. It\’s based on true incidents; I read another book a while back about horses that were abandoned on the land and got fenced into the missile range. I liked the contrast of reading about the same events in a fictional novel, a quickly-moving story with some suspense, fractious characters and vivid nature writing.

Rating: 3/5 181 pages, 1962

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Ten Pound Press
BF77008
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Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, General Fiction, Western

Sand

by Will James

I was surprised at being disappointed in this book. It wasn\’t nearly as good as Smoky. As Smoky tells the education of a wild horse into a cow pony, Sand tells about a spoiled rich city kid who learns to be a cowboy. Gilbert Tilden is on his way across the country to visit his father, when he accidentally gets off the train in the middle of the Great Plains, and being drunk, fails to get back on. He wanders about the wide expanse of prarie, gets scared by some cattle, and stumbles into a cowboy camp. At first the cowboys are just watching out for him until they have the chance to dump him back at the train depot, but pretty soon Tilden is interested in the doings of the camp, and wants to make something of himself. He fixes on the idea of learning how to be a \”useful hand\”, to prove something to his father. Then he falls in love with a local rancher\’s daughter, and sets himself the nearly impossible goal of catching a wild stallion in order to win her favor. Many other men have tried to catch the stallion before, so he not only has to learn the ways of wild horses, and make careful plans, but also avoid the competition.

This had all the makings of a great story, but there were some things that seriously hindered my enjoyment of it. First of all, the main thread of the narrative is relating Tilden\’s thoughts, musings, and plans- over and over. It would have been more interesting to read more details of his training and the work he had to do to catch the wild horse, which were often skipped over. Sometimes it was hard to puzzle out what was being talked about, as I\’m not really familiar with cowboy lingo (some of the words here). And the whole book is written in slang. Rather like Huckleberry Finn, which I was able to get used to. Here, I couldn\’t. It was particularly annoying that the words Tilden or the girl spoke were in near-perfect English, and the rest of the text in cowboy slang, misspellings and all. It would have been far easier to read if the narrative was proper, and slang only used when the cowboys talked. I thought this book would be a lot like Captains Courageous, which has a similiar theme- spoiled rich kid forced to work and build character- but here, I did not get much sense of Tilden\’s character growth, even though it was discussed all the time. By the end of the book it was all feeling rather dull. Even the end of the story where Tilden finally gets close to the wild horse wasn\’t nearly as interesting as I\’d hoped.

I read this book for the 9 for \’09 Challenge.

Rating: 2/5 364 pages, 1929

Anyone written a blog post about this book? Let me know and I\’ll add your link.

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Current Reads, Juvenile Fic, Western

Smoky

the Cowhorse
by Will James

This book is about the life of a ranch horse. Smoky was born free on the range in the wild west, and wandered about just living his life amongst the wide open spaces and half-wild range cattle, until at the age of four he was caught by a cowboy named Clint. The cowboy broke him to ride, and trained him to be a cutting horse, working cattle. They became an excellent, skilled team with deep affection for each other. Halfway through the book drama ensues (beyond the everyday excitement of rounding up cattle) when Smoky is stolen from the outfit by an outlaw. This man continually mistreats the horse, until he becomes mistrusting of and vicious towards people. He becomes a famous bronco in the rodeos, then when that nearly wears him out, is sold again to be hired out from a livery stable, and finally winds up as a plow horse on a farm. By the end of the book, Smoky has been treated so badly by humans that his health is ruined and his life almost over- when in the nick of time he gets rescued by a familiar face from his days back on the ranch.

In many ways this book reminded me a lot of Black Beauty. It had very similar themes- showing how the horse grew up relatively free, his experiences being broken in and trained to work, several relatively happy years being properly cared for, and then going through a string of ignorant or cruel people who mistreat him, until at the end he is found by a friend and nursed back to health. It shows in great detail how the horse feels and perceives his situations, and how he can excel at a skill working in harmony with humans, or suffer terribly at their hands. The section of the book that describes his life as a rodeo horse made me think of When the Legends Die (although in that case it was the man who became broken and bitter towards men). The one thing I found difficult about Smoky is its language. Will James lived and worked as a cowboy for much of his life, and the grammar and spelling in his book, while adding some authentic flavor of cowboy dialect and culture, was at first very awkward to read. It took me some time to get used to it. I haven\’t read many books about the \”wild west\”, but this one certainly brings it alive for me- especially the vivid descriptions of the scenery. You can almost taste the dust in your mouth.

Rating: 4/5 263 pages, 1926

More opinions at:
Bookin\’ It
Children\’s Lit and Other Bits
The Newbery Project
All the Newberys
Read the Newberys

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Fiction, Juvenile Fic, Past Reads, Western

Tag: Western

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