Emily's Ride to Courage

by Sarah Maury Swan

Emily is happy to be spending the next year with her grandfather on his horse farm. Her sister, Jen, couldn’t be angrier about being stuck in the middle of nowhere while their mother is deployed in Afghanistan and their dad repairs bridges in California. Jen is miserable at the thought of starting high school in a new town. She takes out all her frustration on Emily, who doesn’t know how to help Jen see the beauty in farm life. Emily’s time on the farm gets even better when Grandpa hints that he will buy her a horse of her own. All Emily has to do is finish all the math schoolwork she’s been assigned over the summer. Emily falls in love with the kind and gentle Gemini, but Grandpa declares that any horse with four white hooves is bad news. As Emily works to get Grandpa to accept Gemini and her sister to accept their new situation, the unthinkable happens. Their mother goes missing in Afghanistan! Emily and Jen feel helpless, but their special bond holds the clue to getting their mother home safely.

148 pages, Paperback

Published December 14, 2017

About the author

I have spent my entire life surrounded by books and art. Many members of my family were writers or loved books. My father's parents were both journalist and authors and my mother's parents loved to read. Granny was the librarian for the town I grew in.

My husband and I spent 20 some years caring for horses on our farm in Maryland after raising 4 children.

But after the last horse died, we decided to move to New Bern, NC. And now I pursue my writing on a broader scale.

That is, when I'm not playing golf or kayaking or bird watching.

Since two of our children followed my husband's dreams of being a musician, we promote singer/songwriters by hosting house concerts.

Reviews

[Grady Ormsby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emily’s Ride to Courage is Sarah Maury Swan’s second work of adolescent fiction. Typical teenage conflicts abound: sibling rivalry, the doubts and confusions of making new friends, the loneliness of living in a family that is temporarily divided, the worry over a mother who is in a dangerous part of the world, the frustrations of an academic challenge and, of course, the common, ordinary adolescent angst, confusion and impatience.
The novel is interestingly written in the first person present tense. That and a conversational tone lend immediacy to the narrative. The style is clear and smooth focused on the telling of the story of a girl spending the summer with her sister and her grandpa on a horse farm in Maryland. The twin themes of courage and trust are developed in tandem as Emily faces her challenges. An additional strength is added to the novel as it quickly becomes obvious that Swan knows horses.