It’s been a long time since I’ve read a novel that’s as beautiful as The Hearts of Horses. From the first page to the last, author Molly Gloss makes each sentence speak volumes as she tells the story of protagonist Martha Lessen. Gloss’s lush description of the wild yet quickly disappearing countryside makes you feel as if you’re standing in tall hillside grass, but the brutality she describes keeps this book from descending into sugarcoated fantasy. There is, in short, not one part of this book I didn’t love.
In her imagination, 17-year-old Martha envisions herself as wild girl riding a horse at breakneck speed across a wide-open span of belly-high grass. Now that the Great War is on, though, such thoughts need to be shelved. In The Hearts of Horses, Martha learns that the best dreams are those that are based not in fantasy, but in reality.
Swept up in patriotic fervor and looking for adventure, almost every young man in eastern Oregon, it seems, is signing up to go to war. Martha Lessen sets out on her own in search of available work, hoping to escape an abusive father and find her way.
Used to sleeping in barns and willing to eat lunch from the back of a mount, Martha realizes that with the men away, there will be ranches in need of able bodies. She also knows horses. Turning wild, half-tame geldings or mares into stock horses is usually men’s work, but Martha apprenticed to a man who taught her that using a soft voice and speaking a horse’s language works better than a whip. Rather than employing the customary method of taming a horse by breaking it, Martha becomes a virtual horse whisperer.
The year is 1917 – there is no electricity in the county, and fear is prevalent. Anyone with a German accent is scorned. Cancer is a terrifying presence, and alcohol, even in a dry county, is frighteningly easy to get. Much as likes everyone she meets, though, this is of little matter to Martha. As soon as the job is done, she’s off to another part of the country. Her mantra is that that a patient person can make a patient animal – horses only need to learn trust, and the rest is easy.
The same could be said about a skittish girl. This is a coming-of-age tale that will capture your heart, as will the story of Martha’s journey to find herself.
If you or your book group is looking for the next must-have novel, grab The Hearts of Horses and dig in. This is one book you shouldn’t dream of missing.
© 2007, Houghton Mifflin
$24.00 / $32.95 Canada, 289 pages
