Mending Horses

Starred review from February 15, 2014
In this sequel to A Difficult Boy (2008), 16-year-old Daniel Linnehan, now released from his indenture and the owner of a chestnut mare named Ivy, finds freedom difficult to manage. Suspicious New Englanders (it's 1839, and anti-Irish prejudice is rampant) object to his air of prosperity. He joins the peddler Jonathan Stocking and Billy, the ragtag child who accompanies him, out of a sense of self-preservation, but gradually, he begins to see them as family. When Jonathan joins up with an old friend who owns a circus, Daniel finds he can put his talents to good use retraining an equestrian act and teaching Ivy to perform in the ring. Meanwhile, Billy's older brother, Liam, survives a fever that kills his younger brothers with the help of a neighboring whore; his father, who previously sold Billy to Jonathan, has abandoned him. Liam believes Billy--who's really a girl, Nuala--is dead. Eventually, Billy confronts her father, who tries to take her back, seeing that she can now produce an income. How she and Daniel find peace in unlikely circumstances provides a satisfying end to their joint saga. Fluid writing and a true sense of history--including fascinating insights into early circuses--raise this well above the usual. Barker's characters are nuanced, difficult, and real, and so is her sense of horses. An absorbing look into a patch of past not often examined. (Historical fiction. 8-14)

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April 1, 2014

Gr 5-8-Barker's stand-alone sequel to A Difficult Boy(Holiday House, 2008) opens with a terrifying exhibition of injustice resulting from a once-virulent prejudice many readers may find unfamiliar. Ireland-born teen Daniel Linnehan, newly released from a spurious indentureship in 1839 New England, stops at an unfamiliar blacksmith with his beloved horse, Ivy. The self-satisfied blacksmith and his gawky apprentice-Barker's deft sketches even endow most peripheral characters with individuality-conclude from Daniel's foreign speech and apprehensive manner that he stole the fine creature. The man gathers a mob, bellowing for the boy's head on a charge of murder (The author adds flashes of humor in unspooling the imagined crime's escalation). Barker's propulsive language immerses readers into Daniel's distress as the horde violently kidnaps him before his rescue by an independent-minded peddlar with a fiesty young companion named Billy, another troubled soul with Irish origins. Though both youths have suffered as a result of the 19th-century biases that are meticulously depicted here, Billy's brash combativeness conflicts with Daniel's guarded and anxious competence. The two join a traveling show run by a shrewd entertainer keen on Billy's angelic voice and Daniel's instinctive equine skills. Barker fashions a well-researched roster of circus eccentrics to serve as a colorful backdrop to Daniel's slow flowering as a horse trainer and Billy's pugnacious evolution towards contentment; a sole black character functions mostly to deliver a lesson on meeting prejudice with stoicism and pride. The sideshow troupers, tragic childhoods, and near-fatal altercations-plus some gender disguise-could combine for a noisy novel, but Barker crafts a story of grace and strength.-Robbin E. Friedman, Chappaqua Library, NY

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Starred review from April 15, 2014
Grades 6-10 *Starred Review* In 1830s New England, Irish immigrant Daniel, formerly indentured as a servant, gains his freedom only to be accused of stealing his former master's horse, a rumor that quickly escalates to include mass murder and leads to his near lynching. After his fortuitous rescue, the teen travels to a nearby town and falls in with his old friend Stocking, now accompanied by 12-year-old Billy. Soon Daniel discovers that Billy, who Stocking rescued from a drunken, Irish ne'er-do-well of a father, is actually a girl in disguise. The three travel and work odd jobs, like selling wooden nutmegs, until they find a place in a traveling circus, where Daniel's skills with horses and ponies, whose anatomical and behavioral scars he can mend, prove to be quite a boon. Meanwhile, obstinate and headstrong Billy learns tragic news about the family she has left behind. In this sequel to A Difficult Boy (2008), Barker skillfully evokes the realities of class, racial, and gender oppression in the nineteenth century through a rich cast, lifelike setting, and complex, compelling plot. Readers who discovered the joy and agony of historical fiction in L. A. Meyer's Bloody Jack (2002) will find this vivid account every bit as compelling.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2014
In 1839 Connecticut, teen Daniel Linnehan (A Difficult Boy) joins peddler Mr. Stocking and his ward Billy to re-train and care for neglected and abused traveling-circus ponies. Daniel's annoyance with Billy--a girl in disguise--gradually lessens, but when Billy's abusive father returns, they're all in danger. Elements of exaggerated melodrama strain credulity, but apt horse-training sequences will entrance horse lovers.

(Copyright 2014 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)