Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7754 in Books
• Published on: 2008-12-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780547085753
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
Gloss's austere latest (after Wild Life) features a wandering taciturn tomboy who finds her place in rural Oregon while the men are away at war. After she leaves home in 1917, 19-year-old Martha Lessen plans to travel from farm to farm in Elwha County, Oregon, breaking horses left behind by owners away fighting. She winds up in small town Shelby, where farmers George and Louise Bliss convince her to stay the winter with them after she domesticates their broncos with soft words and songs instead of lariats and hobbles. While breaking the town's horses, Martha meets a slovenly drunk, a clan of Western European immigrants and two unmarried sisters running a ranch with the help of an awkward, secretive teenager. When Martha's not making the rounds or riding through the Clarks Range, Louise tries her hand at socializing (or, perhaps, breaking) her, but Martha chafes at town dances, social outings and Louise's hand-me-down church dresses. Gloss's narrative is sometimes as slow as Martha's progress with the more recalcitrant beasts, but following stubborn, uncompromising Martha as she goes about her work provides its own unique pleasures. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Ron Charles

Books about horses join a stable of well-loved titles foaled by Black Beauty in 1877. Over the years, Anna Sewell's only novel, which she called "the autobiography of a horse," has sold more than 50 million copies, and more recent titles, such as Nicholas Evans's The Horse Whisperer, Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit and Jane Smiley's Horse Heaven, have kept readers stampeding to the bookstore.

I don't know if Molly Gloss's lovely new novel will spur such intense interest, but I hope so. The Hearts of Horses is set in northeastern Oregon in 1917, the twilight of the Old West when that way of life was already legendary. The story begins, as such legends must, with a mysterious figure riding into view on a badly scarred mare. But Gloss immediately begins to transform these worn conventions. This stranger is 19-year-old Martha Lessen, the first girl anyone in these parts "had seen advertising herself as a broncobuster." Since most of the young men who worked these farms have headed off to the war in Europe, Martha is "looking for horses that needed breaking out." She sets aside her natural bashfulness long enough to tell a skeptical rancher, "I can gentle most anything that has four feet and a tail."

That's a fair description of this author's ability, too. Although a strong feminist impulse runs through the story, it's been expertly "gentled." Martha has no sense that she's part of any movement toward gender equality, but she looks like Calamity Jane, and Gloss notes that "in her childhood daydreams she was always a boy." Even now, she "liked it better when the men seemed to forget she was a girl." And so she has left her abusive father "to live a footloose cowboy life and see the places she'd read about in Western romances." She asks only for space in a barn, sleeping on a bed she sewed from a wool blanket and an old fur rug. With a candle to read a few pages of Black Beauty before falling off to sleep, she's got all she needs.

Gloss helps us understand just how radical this young woman's method is at a time when animals were beaten and tortured -- sometimes to death -- in the name of taming them. "Plenty of men thought nothing of being rough with horses," she writes. "A horse had to have his spirit entirely broken was what a lot of men thought, had to be beaten into abject submission." By that violent standard, what Martha does with a bucking chestnut seems like doing nothing at all: singing almost inaudibly for hours, brushing the horse with her hands, walking slowly around a field. But the proof is in her remarkable results, derived from a deep sensitivity to these giant animals. Before long, she's signed on with seven clients in a 15-mile circuit, riding and training horses from one farm to the next each day.

That work plan also provides the novel's structure, which allows Gloss to move through these interconnected families, developing their separate dramas as she watches Martha grow into a cherished member of the community. The ranch families start to care for and depend on her; she carries news and mail from one farm to the next. We gradually sink into their hopes and fears just as Martha does, with startling, intimate glimpses into the loneliness some of these people endure. The fever of patriotism is already warping the landscape and shattering old friendships. Among the novel's most harrowing moments are scenes involving a young father dying of cancer at a time when the only available treatment was stoic endurance. Any one of these quiet but intense chapters is worth the price of the book.

The plot doesn't move so much as accrete, in the way that Kent Haruf and Ivan Doig manage to do in their novels, full of the wisdom of well-lived ordinary lives. Yes, the risk of dullness haunts stories like these, but when it works -- the subtle rhythm of one scene after another, with touches of warmth and humor and compassion -- there's something deeply satisfying about it.

Ever so slowly, Martha notices the attentions of a plainspoken farmhand named Henry, who works for two old spinsters, sisters who are "unconcerned by convention, riding cross-saddle along with their cowboys . . . exactly the sort of women Martha admired." Henry shares Martha's profound empathy with horses, but they're far less articulate with each other. Their muted romance is among the book's chief pleasures, a reminder of a time (was it possible?) when adults expressed their passion in long, silent walks, splitting a piece of pie and, finally, after a few months -- maybe -- holding hands.

That sounds corny, but there isn't a false move in this poignant novel, which demonstrates as much insight into the hearts of men and women as into the hearts of horses. Books like this are easy to overlook, but there's someone on your holiday list who will feel blessed by Gloss's gentle story.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Molly Gloss’s affecting fourth novel turns the Western genre on its head with a woman as the mysterious stranger appearing on horseback, but Gloss is known for her independent, self-sufficient heroines. The Hearts of Horses is perhaps the most sentimental of all her works. Though the plot is more a collection of linked stories than a single, continuous narrative—a stylistic technique that most reviewers commented on but did not criticize—Gloss’s simple, unadorned prose and stark portrayal of the West during the first two decades of the 20th century create a moving, wistful memorial to a lost way of life. Shy, self-effacing Martha captivates her fellow humans in much the same way she charms wayward horses. Only USA Today suggested that the story lacks a certain warmth. However, Martha will no doubt beguile most readers.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

All Heart
I chose this book because of the plurality in the title, I thought I would learn about the character and soul of non-verbal beings, and the cover photo, clearly female, riding swiftly, freely with purpose, accomplishment and joy. These are superficial reasons for choosing a book and what a splendid surprise I had in the world of this book. I am an urban woman, no country or wide open spaces or large animals in my life but I loved the language of this book, how it made a place, a time, and its people live for me. Thank you Molly Gloss for a read so engrossing I reached the end of the line and the bus driver did not shoo me out; waited until I came back to my world and hopped off! I apologized, he said he noticed me reading through the week, watched me intent, smiling, weeping, frowning. That day he knew I was at the end, and could not bear to disturb me.

My Heart, Too
I loved this book. It's set during WW1 when so many young men were gone to the trenches, that one over-tall, painfully shy young woman got to live the life her unique skills suited her for: horse trainer, horse gentler--the life of a cowboy. The heroine makes a place for herself in a new community that can accept and value her for what she has to offer. So much more than a take on history, so much more than a romance, this is a story of time and place and people still on the frontier of American life. A book to keep, a book to share--just make sure you get it back!

A Wonderful Book
Like the previous reviewer, I intended to limit myself to one or two chapters a day. That was very difficult to do, as I savored every word of this book. It was the inner world of Martha Lesson that I most identified with, and my hat is off to Molly Gloss for capturing so well the patience and humility it takes to make a horse as well as Martha. "The horse doesn't care how much you know until he knows how much you care" are the words from the wisest man I ever knew. I picked this book off the counter at the Powell's Bookstore stand in the Portland airport and I am so glad that I did. Read this book, you won't be sorry you did.