Events

Jane Smiley, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Thousand Acres, makes her debut for young readers with this novel set on a California horse ranch in the 1960s,where a girl finds refuge from her problems with the horses. Seventh grader Abby Lovitt has always been more at ease with horses than with people. With all the stress at school (the Big Four have turned against Abby and her friends) and home (her brother Danny is gone--for good, it seems--and now Daddy won't speak his name), Abby seeks refuge with the Georges (the geldings) and the Jewels (the mares). Jane Smiley, who grew up in St. Louis, returns with what Publishers Weekly calls, "a lyrical meditation on horses, families and the vicissitudes of peer relationships among girls."