Outstanding character-driven novel

books:


	• The Hearts of Horses Molly Gloss Houghton Mifflin, 2007 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 27 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Ride through history

I enjoyed this book from cover to cover. The story is well rounded and easily takes you back to the way things were during the early 19th century, an unusual main character, cultural norms and prejudices of the time all flow together naturally and weave a delightful story anyone would enjoy. Not just for horse lovers. I wish it were longer! I hate saying goodbye to the characters I've come to know in a good story. Highly recommended.

Outstanding character-driven novel

When I was a kid I read every horse story in print and I remember especially Black Beauty (of course) and the books of Will James. Hearts of Horses is the same kind of book. The language is as simple as a pair of leather chaps, and the lead character of Martha is as quiet and soft-spoken, determined and brave, as any character Jimmy Stewart ever played--and almost as tall. It's a Western, but not a bang-bang shoot-em-up Western. It's about a young woman (though she's constantly and a little annoyingly always referred to as a girl) who asks for no special treatment, intrudes on no one, and makes her own way by doing what she does best--gentling and training horses. The author writes with the same quiet authority with which Martha trains her horses. It's a wonderful book.
...Ruth Sims/author of The Phoenix

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wonderful book

This book held my interest all the way through, but non-horse people might feel it dragged. I was totally unaware of the history of young women who were employed as horse breakers or trainers.
Even though her methods were unorthodox then, it seems only common sense that her methods would be more effective, and possibly just as quick in the long run.
I love horses, and even though I'm not as knowledgeable as I would like, It breaks my heart to hear of cruel training methods. Martha is an amazing character.
I want to read more of Gloss's books.

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Hearts of Horses

This book was enjoyable, it is more what I had expected from the book The Horse Whisperer actually (which I was very disappointed in). Just enough historical data so the reader has an idea what the world was like, enough character information to make them feel like neighbors.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

This breakout novel from the author of The Jump-Off Creek tells the heartwarming story of a determined young woman with a gift for "gentling" wild horses.

In the winter of 1917, a big-boned young woman shows up at George Bliss's doorstep. She's looking for a job breaking horses, and he hires her on. Many of his regular hands are off fighting the war, and he glimpses, beneath her showy rodeo garb, a shy but strong-willed girl with a serious knowledge of horses.

So begins the irresistible tale of nineteen-year-old Martha Lessen, a female horse whisperer trying to make a go of it in a man's world. It was thought that the only way to break a horse was to buck the wild out of it, and broken ribs and tough falls just went with the job. But over several long, hard winter months, many of the townsfolk in this remote county of eastern Oregon witness Martha's way of talking in low, sweet tones to horses believed beyond repair?and getting miraculous, almost immediate results?and she thereby earns a place of respect in the community.

Along the way, Martha helps a family save their horses when their wagon slides into a ravine. She gentles a horse for a dying man?a last gift to his young son. She clashes with a hired hand who is abusing horses in unspeakable ways. Soon, despite her best efforts to remain aloof and detached, she comes to feel enveloped by a sense of community and family that she's never had before.

With the elegant sweetness of Plainsong and a pitch-perfect sense of western life reminiscent of Annie Dillard, The Hearts of Horses is a remarkable story about how people and animals make connections and touch each other's lives in the most unexpected and profound ways.

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