I loved this book as one of the most beautifully crafted and intimate inward and outward journeys of a character I have ever read.
John Chenneville is seriously wounded at the end of the Civil War and, upon his return to his beautiful Creole St. Louis home, learns that his beloved sister, baby, and husband have been viciously murdered. His relentless search takes him through Oklahoma tribal lands and war-ravaged Texas, where he is confronted with the worst and best of humanity.
The author’s descriptions of scenes and characters are stunning, and I was sent through an entire succession of emotions, from laughing to anger to crying.
The main character is determined to murder the man who murdered his sister and her family, yet his integrity shows through in every thought and action. The unexpected end is perfect.
Consumed with grief, driven by vengeance, a man undertakes an unrelenting odyssey across the lawless post-Civil War frontier seeking redemption in this fearless novel from the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of News of the World.
Union soldier John Chenneville suffered a traumatic head wound in battle. His recovery took the better part of a year as he struggled to regain his senses and mobility. By the time he returned home, the Civil War was over, but tragedy awaited. John's beloved sister and her family had been brutally murdered.
I loved this story of a strong-willed woman who survives her husband’s abuse and does what she needs in order to provide for herself and her sons.
She maintains a loving and compassionate heart—a character I could cheer for. She is surrounded by vividly drawn, often desperate characters who find it easy to threaten a woman to get what they want. But Ruby is not just any woman. Add the excellent descriptions of the Arizona desert, and our perilous scene is set.
Arizona Territory, 1899. Ruby Fortune faces an untenable choice: murder her abusive husband or continue to live with bruises that never heal. One bullet is all it takes. Once known as “Girl Wonder” on the Wild West circuit, Ruby is now a single mother of four boys in her hometown of Jericho, an end-of-the-world mining town north of Tucson. Here, Ruby opens a roadside inn to make ends meet. Drifters, grifters, con men, and prostitutes plow through the hotel’s doors, and their escapades pepper the local newspaper like buckshot.…
Voice, time, and place are perfectly portrayed in The Hearts of Horses.
If you love horses as I do, you will love this story, and if you don't, you are bound to love these engaging characters as they struggle to make ends meet in the beautiful remote county of 1917, eastern Oregon.
If this story of the connection between people and people and horses doesn't play your heartstrings, nothing will. I love novels that practically bury me in time and place. If I can’t go there in person, let me do so in a truly well-written story.
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. Many of his regular hands are off fighting the war in Europe, and he glimpses beneath her showy rodeo garb, a shy but determined girl with a serious knowledge of horses.
So begins the irresistable tale of Martha Lessen, a female horse whisperer trying to make a go of it in a man's world. Along the way, Martha helps a German family, ostracised by the community, to save their horses, gentles another horse for…
At the age of fourteen, Adrien Villere suffers abuse of which he dares not speak. The cost of his silence is partially revealed by his inner pain, vacillation, and impulsive grasps at love throughout the ensuing years. He, his unconventional sister, and his enslaved brother struggle for respect and their future among two East Texas plantation dynasties.
In this nineteenth-century Washington County, Texas society, strict rules of belief and behavior are clear, and public opinion can shape an entire life. Often absent, Papa Paien Villere remains silent regarding several facts he has withheld from everyone, including one which could destroy his entire family.
