Nobody's Horse

Nobody's Horse

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley makes her debut for young readers in this stirring novel about a girl and her love of horses.

Abby Lovitt has always been more at ease with horses than with people. Her father insists they call all the mares 'Jewel' and all the geldings 'George' and warns Abby not to get attached: the horses are there to be sold. But with all the stress at school (the Big Four have turned against Abby and her friends) and at home (her brother Danny is gone - for good, it seems - and now Daddy won't speak his name), Abby seeks refuge with the Georges and the Jewels. But there's one gelding on her family's farm that gives her no end of trouble: the horse who bucks her right off every chance he gets, the horse her father makes her ride and train, every day. She calls him the Grumpy George.

'Jane Smiley's passion for horses shines out of every page.' - Meg Rossoff
'A lyrical meditation on horses, families, and the vicissitudes of peer relationships among girls.' - Publishers Weekly
'I have never admired [Smiley's] writing as much as I do in the first of what promises to be a series of books for children...can easily take its place on the shelf along with the great horse stories of childhood.' - LATimes.com

Jane Smiley was born in Los Angeles and grew up in St Louis, Missouri. She was educated at Vassar College and the University of Iowa. In 1992 she won the Pulitzer Prize for A Thousand Acres, for which she also won the National Book Critics' Circle Award. Her other novels include Moo (1995), Horse Heaven (2000), Good Faith (2003), Ten Days in the Hills (2007) and Private Life (2010). She has written on politics, farming, horse-training, child-rearing, literature, impulse buying, marriage and many other topics in publications including Vogue, the New Yorker, Practical Horseman, Harper's and the New York Times. In 2006 she was awarded the PEN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. Nobody's Horse is her first novel for young readers and draws on her lifelong love of horses. Jane lives in California with her family, three dogs, and her sixteen (and counting) horses.

Nobody's Horse
Allen and Unwin
Author: Jane Smiley
ISBN: 9780571253548
Price: $16.99