The Hearts of Horses: News & Reviews
Cover to Cover bookseller pick (see "Share with Friends" section; includes link to video)
—Today's Book Club, Today Show on NBC, 28 February 2008
Interview (includes link to audio)
—Morning Edition, National Public Radio, 28 February 2008
Helen's Book Club discussion.
—AM Northwest, KATU/ABC, Portland, Oregon, 8 January 2008
Interview (includes link to video)
—KVAL 13, Eugene, Oregon, 2 January 2008
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.
....[T]here 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.
—Ron Charles, The Washington Post
...[T]he very good reviews for Molly Gloss's latest thrillingly great novel, The Hearts of Horses, haven't seemed to recognize the full achievement of the book. I feel it is being marginalized a bit as a Western—which it is—when it's also deserving of a much broader audience.
—Gwenda Bond, Shaken & Stirred
....[T]his is a book that I want to press in the hands of anyone looking for a good, well-written story. There are no gimmicks, just a lot of people with a lot of questions and a year in which change happens—as it will in real life and good fiction. Martha is transformed as much as the animals she works with and the people around her all find their lives upended, in ways big and small, as the months go by. I cared a lot about these characters. Read the first chapter, and I promise, Martha will belong to you from that moment on; you just won't want to let her go.
—Colleen Mondor, Cabinet of Wonders, Bookslut.com
....In this book, author Gloss has concocted a memorable story of both interspecies and intraspecies connection. "The Hearts of Horses" might be the title, but Martha discovers the complexities of the human heart, too. Already a naturally talented horse-whisperer, she also finds her own voice, among her own kind.
The lives of assorted families and individuals, and their ways of coping with the tribulations of that time and place, are the material of this novel.
But in learning to extend the empathy that guides her work ethic to the rest of her life, Martha gives this novel its quiet but powerful intention. It's a message that has as much relevance during this time of war as during that one.
—Barbara Lloyd McMichael, The Olympian, 16 December 2007
December 2007 Book Sense Pick
"Desperado" by Molly Gloss
—Powells.com Original Essays series
....Gloss' intimacy with the landscape and ranch life is conveyed beautifully in particulars and small observations. ("The weather turned colder, the ground frozen so hard it rang under the horses' feet.") She also has the skilled novelist's ability to show entire lives intertwined, however loosely, in a community. With terrible authority, she sums up the passage of time and generations: "It occurred to her now," Martha thinks later in life, "that the West of her dreams was not—never could be—the testing ground for atomic bombs." "You know, honey," she tells her granddaughter, "I guess we brought about the end of our cowboy dreams ourselves."
—Susan Salter Reynolds, The Los Angeles Times
Reading and interview (includes photos and links to audio files)
—SF in SF series, San Francisco, California, 17 November 2007
....Fans of Kent Haruf and Leif Enger will adore this gentle, lovely novel.
—Northwest-Books.com
"A Ride into the Heart of a Cowgirl," feature article in The Oregonian
"A New Book We Love," Hallmark Magazine
....Like Carol Emshwiller and Kathleen Alcalá, two other women writing Westerns and SF (both ostensibly male genres), Gloss ignores boundaries instead of defying them. The mythic and the mundane are one. So her re-creation of a romantic past and its irrecoverable dreams feels solid, rooted in the everyday of long ago, palpable as the curve of a china mug in your hand. But the places described with such offhand matter-of-factness in "The Hearts of Horses"—Elwha County and Little Bird Woman Creek and Ipsoot Pass—appear in no atlas. It's an Oregon of the mind Gloss takes her readers to, one that evanesces with her narrator's imaginary breath.
—Nisi Shawl, The Seattle Times
....For Gloss, who has declared a commitment to voicing women's lives in the West, Martha is a characteristic heroine: independent, stoical, self-effacing, with limited patience for her own needs, but extending fathomless tenderness toward horses. Gloss acknowledges the potential for sentimentality here with a nod toward "Black Beauty," Martha's bedtime reading,,..But it's a relevant indulgence in this affecting, timely novel that lays explicit emphasis on empathy as a yardstick of humanity....
—Elsbeth Lindner, San Francisco Chronicle
....[T]his is the memorable coming of age story of a young woman in the days that, we know, would soon yield the right of women to vote. Martha Lessen lives, breathes, and understands horses. In THE HEARTS OF HORSES, we get to know Martha as she gets to know herself.
—Richie Partington, Richie's Picks
....Not just a horse story or a tale of the West, Gloss' moving novel addresses themes of war, alcoholism, illness and death, and commitment to the land and a sometimes lonely, often harsh way of life—and is a story not soon forgotten.
—Deborah Donovan, BookPage
Martha Lessen is a young woman on the run, taking with her the three horses she loves. It is 1917. Looking for work in the dry-grass country of eastern Oregon, she touts herself as a breaker of horses. Most of the young men are overseas fighting, so Martha is hired on at the Bliss family ranch. Word spreads of her gentle horse-whispering ways. As she rides daily from ranch to ranch to work with various horses, she becomes a sort of one-woman Pony Express, carrying messages and food and learning to act quickly in cases of illness or injury. For the shy Martha, with a less than desirable childhood behind her, the acceptance she earns is transformative. Gloss's fourth novel (after Wild Life) is based on historical accounts of cowgirls in the American West. With obvious appeal for horse lovers, it has a homespun quality, and varies in action between a gentle canter and energetic gallop. Strongly recommended....
—Keddy Ann Outlaw, Library Journal (starred review)
A female broncobuster? It seems doubtful, but with most of the able-bodied men off fighting in World War I, Oregon rancher George Bliss decides to take a chance on Martha Lessen. Barely 19 years old, Martha has three times the natural horse sense as more seasoned wranglers. With a talent for breaking horses to saddle in a uniquely gentle way, she soon proves herself in a man's world, becoming an indispensable part of the fabric of the community in the meantime. Martha's tail end of the fronteir adventures is chronicled in a delightfully down-home, matter-of-fact voice by Gloss, author of The Jump-Off Creek (1989).
—Margaret Flanagan, Booklist, 1 September 2007
....Gloss (Wild Life, 2000, etc.) offers an acutely observed, often lyrical portrayal that mirrors our own era and, title notwithstanding, has as much to say about people as about horses.
—Kirkus Reviews, 15 August 2007