Valentine’s Day being the big holiday this month, I thought The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss, was an appropriate title to review. Little did I know what a treat I had given myself.
Reading this novel transported me back in time to circa-1917 eastern Oregon, to share the experiences of Martha Lessen, a young woman trying to make a living breaking horses during the early days of World War I.
It’s immediately apparent why Molly Gloss is an award-winning author. After the first paragraph, I was no longer just reading the book, I was living its story. Of the many reasons to read The Hearts of Horses, the writing alone – subject matter aside – is one of the strongest.
Heritage
If you’re like me, and have an affinity for our Western heritage, then you’ll share my appreciation for the pure authenticity of this book’s setting. You’ll recognize the horses, see the terrain, feel the cold of winter and learn to love the people who inhabit this world. You may never have lived in eastern Oregon, and you may be a generation or two removed from the time period, but I guarantee that you’ll feel that you’ve visited when you’ve read The Hearts of Horses.
For instance, this is how Gloss describes the lives of the girls who traveled from ranch to ranch breaking horses for the outfits whose men had gone off to war: “Those girls could break horses as well as any man but they had their own ways of doing it, not such a bucking Wild West show. They went about it so quiet and deliberate, children would get tired of watching and go off to do something else. They were usually alone, those girls, but it wasn’t like in the moving pictures or the gunslinger novels, the female always in peril. If they were in peril it wasn’t from outlaws or crooked sheriffs, it was from the usual things that can happen with ranch work – breaking bones, freezing your fingers off – the kinds of things that can happen whether you’re a man or a woman.”
Horses
Martha’s background with horses and her philosophy about starting them mirror those of today’s natural horsemanship trainers. With a father who was abusive of his children and his horses, Martha spent her time with an older horseman who had a better, gentler way with people and horses.
Of Martha’s horsemanship the author writes, “She had found it to be a surprisingly easy thing to break a 3- or 4-year-old range horse, a horse that had been living almost wild, but among older horses who regularly took up with human beings as an ordinary part of life. Those young ones were afraid of humans in a general way but not deeply so, and they didn’t lay back their ears and come at you like a horse that had been manhandled, badly treated and consequently made stubborn or vicious; and though it was different for each horse, it wasn’t uncommon for her to be saddling and riding a horse by the second day, and some of the agreeable ones within a couple of hours of being introduced.
Humanity
Martha’s experiences with the ranch men and women of eastern Oregon reveal as much about her character as her experiences with horses, as her solitary life slowly becomes more entwined with theirs. Through Molly Gloss’s evocative writing, the reader meets characters so real they linger in the mind long after closing the book.
Writing of Martha’s wedding, “There had been a moment, a bright sharp moment, as they stood before the preacher in the Woodruffs’ front room making their wedding promises, when Martha thought suddenly of Ruth and Tom Kandel – a flash of insight and of fear. That in marrying Henry she was throwing herself open to the very thing she had seen in Ruth’s face that terrible morning when Tom was in so much pain, the morning they had waited together for the doctor to come. It was a glimpse of the hard truth that loving someone meant living every moment with the knowledge he might die – die in a horrible way – and leave you alone. But Martha was barely 20 years old and this was not something she could hold in her mind for very long.”
Heartfelt Wishes
I hope you’ll spend some time with Martha and the rest of the wonderful characters – both human and equine – in The Hearts of Horses. You’ll find it time well spent, and a world worth revisiting time and again.
And for you and your horses, I wish health and happiness wherever you may ride.
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