Riding Lessons

Unabridged
Author: Sara Gruen
Narrator: Maggi-Meg Reed
Genres: Fiction
Publisher: Highbridge Audio
Date: July 2008
Length: 10 hours, 30 minutes
Ratings:
Formats:
  • CD

Overview

From the bestselling author of Water for Elephants: A devastating accident that ends both the career of an Olympic-contender equestrienne and the life of her beloved horse sets off a chain of events that comes to a crisis point nearly twenty years later.

As a world-class equestrian and Olympic contender, Annemarie Zimmer lived for the thrill of flight atop a strong, graceful animal. Then, at eighteen, a tragic accident destroyed her riding career and Harry, the beautiful horse she cherished.

Now, twenty years later, Annemarie is coming home to her dying father's New Hampshire horse farm. Jobless and abandoned, she is bringing her troubled teenage daughter to this place of pain and memory, where ghosts of an unresolved youth still haunt the fields and stables—and where hope lives in the eyes of the handsome, gentle veterinarian Annemarie loved as a girl . . . and in the seductive allure of a trainer with a magic touch.

But everything will change yet again with one glimpse of a white striped gelding startlingly similar to the one Annemarie lost in another lifetime. And an obsession is born that could shatter her fragile world.

Author Details

Author Details

Gruen, Sara

Sara Gruen's first novel, Riding Lessons, was published in 2004. She is an animal lover who lives with her husband, three children, five cats, two goats, a dog, and a horse in an environmental community north of Chicago. Many of the characters and incidents in the novel are based on real people and true stories gleaned from her extensive research into the world of traveling circuses of the 1930s.

Sara is a Canadian-born dual citizen (Canadian and American) who moved to the States in 1999 for a technical writing job. When she was laid off two years later, instead of looking for another job, she decided to take a gamble on writing fiction full-time. Fortunately, the gamble paid off.

Until 2007 she, her husband, three children, two dogs, two cats, three goats, and horse in an environmentalist community in northern Illinois.They now live in Asheville, North Carolina.

Her novels to date are Riding Lessons (2004) and Flying Changes (2005), featuring Annemarie Zimmer; and Water for Elephants (2006). The Ape House is due to be published in 2009.