The Lady (edition 1988)

NIL

1987

By the time she's thirteen Catriona Carradynes is aware that all is not exactly well with her mother. The Caradynes are horse folk, bred to the bone for generations back. Catriona's mother is not. For Catriona, there is nothing better than horses, whether riden, breathed in, sketched or written about, they're pretty much all she thinks about. They're also everything her rigidly religious mother doesn't want for her youngest daughter.

Well and good, you may be thinking. It's another story about a teenage girl who loves horses and her overbearing parents.

But it's more than that. McCaffrey winds together emotionally charged strands of story - she doesn't pull back from sensitive issues, covering religion, divorce, abuse, the nature of love and foregiveness and growing up. This is no fairy tale, and the happy ending - okay, there is a happy ending - is hard fought, but well earned.

It's Catriona's story, but it's also the story of the Carradyne family, and a look at an Ireland in transition. (And there are plenty of horses, too.) ( )

A touching story of people and horses. one child growing to be a lady struggles with the pressures of life and find happiness in horses and the Lady who enters her life. A man who raises horses all his life finds The Lady is the woman meant for him and his horses. The Lady herself finds peace and joy with the man and his family and all the Horses at Cornanagh. ( )