The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans

From the Publisher

A forty-ton truck hurtles out of control on a snowy country road, a teenage girl on horseback in its path.  In a few terrible seconds the life of a family is shattered.  And a mother's quest begins -- to save her maimed daughter and a horse driven mad by pain.  It is an odyssey that will bring her to...

The Horse Whisperer

He is the stuff of legend.  His voice can calm wild horses and his touch heal broken spirits.  For secrets uttered softly into pricked and troubled ears, such men were once called Whisperers.  Now Tom Booker, the inheritor of this ancient gift, is to meet his greatest challenge.

Annie Graves has traveled across a continent with her daughter, Grace, and their wounded horse, Pilgrim, to the Booker ranch in Montana.  Annie has risked everything -- her career, her marriage, her comfortable life--in her desperate belief that the Whisperer can help them.  The accident has turned Pilgrim savage.  He is now so demented and dangerous that everyone says he should be destroyed.  But Annie won't give up on him, for she feels his fate is inextricably entwined with that of her daughter, who has retreated into a heartrending, hostile silence.  Annie knows that if the horse dies, something in Grace will die too.

In the weeks to come, under the massive sky of the Rocky Mountain Front, all their lives--including Tom Booker's--will be transformed forever in a way none could have foretold.  At once an epic love story and a gripping adventure, The Horse Whisperer weaves an extraordinary tale of healing and redemption--amagnificent emotional journey that explores our ancient bonds with earth and sky and hearts untamed.  It is a stirring elegy to the power of belief and self-discovery, to hopes lost and found again.

Michiko Kakutani

A sappy romance novel, gussied up with some sentimental claptrap about the emotional life of animals and lots of Walleresque hooey about men and women. About the only thing missing is a picture of Fabio on the cover.... Mr. Evans has absolutely no feel for the landscape he is describing and even less insight into his characters....It's a measure of this abysmal novel's deficiencies that Pilgrim the horse emerges as the deepest and most conflicted character in the book. Which is something you expect to find in a children's animal story, not in an over-hyped fable for adults. -- New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Screenwriter Evans's debut novel spent 38 weeks on PW's bestseller list.

Library Journal

While riding her horse Pilgrim on a snowy Saturday morning, young Grace Graves is involved in a horrible accident. She and the horse survive, but she loses a leg and Pilgrim becomes unmanageable. Annie, Grace's mother, senses that if Grace is to recover completely her horse must recover, too. When medicine and other traditional treatments fail to tame the horse, Annie moves Grace and Pilgrim to Montana in order to be near Tom Booker, a legendary figure who is rumored to be able to whisper sanity back into the minds of troubled horses. Tom works wonders for Pilgrim and Grace. Inevitably, Annie falls under his spell, and her marriage and family are put in opposition to her consuming love for Tom. This emotionally wrenching tale, read by Peter Coyote, is recommended for popular collections. M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Providence.

BookList

The advance ballyhoo about this first novel, as well as the huge advance paid to its author, screenwriter Nicholas Evans, is more than enough to make the skeptical reader wince. Hold back those winces if you can, because this is a book of rare power and beauty, a story told simply but elegantly. Teenager Grace Maclean loses a leg in a terrible accident while riding her horse, Pilgrim. Grace and Pilgrim are both emotionally scarred as well as physically devastated by the accident. Realizing that the fates of her daughter and the horse are inextricably linked, Grace's mother, high-powered editor and journalist Annie Graves, launches an all-out campaign to find a "horse whisperer," someone who can cure troubled horses with only a calm voice and a soothing touch. She finds her savior in Tom Booker, a man well known in equestrian circles for his almost mystical skills with horses. Annie packs up Grace and Pilgrim, leaves Grace's father with his law practice in New York, and moves to Montana to try to convince the horse whisperer to help them. Most of the novel describes Tom's work to rebuild all the lives that have been shattered by the accident. Inevitably, love blossoms between the gentle horseman and the uprooted sophisticate, a love with both wonderful and tragic consequences. Expect this outstanding novel to be the talk of the season: it has a 600,000-copy first printing, and Robert Redford has already bought the movie rights for a cool $3 million. The numbers are remarkable, to be sure, but the most remarkable thing about this book is that it actually earns the great popularity it seems destined to enjoy.

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