The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss

Description

Bibliographic Details

• Author: Molly Gloss
• Title: The Hearts of Horses
• Publisher: ‎ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication Date: January 1, 2007
• Language: ‎ English
• Format: Hardcover – 289 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎ 0618799907
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0618799909
• Item Weight: ‎ .92 pounds
• Dimensions: ‎ 6.0 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
• Book Condition: New / Like New – Excellent
• Dust Jacket Condition: Excellent

Synopsis:

Award-winning author Molly Gloss' The Hearts of Horses is an elegant, heartwarming story about the profound connections between people and animals.

In the winter of 1917, nineteen-year-old Martha Lessen saddles her horses and heads for a remote county in eastern Oregon, looking for work “gentling” wild horses. She chances on a rancher, George Bliss, who is willing to hire 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 a young but determined woman trying to make a go of it in a man’s world.

Over the course of several long, hard winter months, many of the townsfolk witness Martha talking in low, sweet tones to horses believed beyond repair — getting miraculous, almost immediate results. It's with this gift that she earns their respect, and a chance to make herself a home.

About the Author:

Molly Gloss

The highlights of my writing life: In 1996 I received a Whiting Writers Award, which is sort of a MacArthur grant in a minor key.

The Jump-Off Creek, about a woman homesteading in the Blue Mountains of Oregon in 1895, was winner of an Oregon Book Award and a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. The Dazzle of Day, my only science fiction novel, received the PEN West Fiction Prize and was a New York Times Notable Book. Fairly unusual for a science fiction novel to win a major PEN prize, but the Notable Book thing, not so much–it was Notable only within the ghetto of science fiction. Wild Life, set in the woods and mountains of Washington State at the turn of the 20th century, won the James Tiptree Jr. Award for literary fantasy, although at the time I wrote it I didn't think I was writing anything fantastical.

The Hearts of Horses, about a young woman breaking horses for some farmers and ranchers in Eastern Oregon in 1917, has (so far!) been the most popular of any of my works. Is it that attention-grabbing cover? or "horses" in the title?

Guess we'll test the second theory, as I've decided to call the new novel Falling From Horses. Set in 1938, it's the story of a young man working as a stunt rider in Hollywood, making cowboy movies. And if you've already read The Hearts of Horses you will know the significance of this factoid: He's Henry and Martha's son.