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In 1938, nineteen-year-old ranch hand Bud Frazer sets out for Hollywood. His little sister has been gone a couple of years now, his parents are finding ranch work and comfort for their loss where they can, but for Bud, Echol Creek, where he grew up and first learned to ride, is a place he can no longer call home. So he sets his sights on becoming a stunt rider in the movies — and rubbing shoulders with the great screen cowboys of his youth.
On the long bus ride south, Bud meets a young woman who also harbors dreams of making it in the movies, though not as a starlet but as a writer, a real writer. Lily Shaw is bold and outspoken, confident in ways out of proportion with her small frame and bookish looks. But the two strike up an unlikely kinship that will carry them through their tumultuous days in Hollywood - and, as it happens, for the rest of their lives.
Acutely observed, Falling from Horses charts what was to be a glittering year in the movie business through the wide eyes and lofty dreams of two people trying to make their mark on the world, or at least make their way in it. Molly Gloss weaves a remarkable tale of humans and horses, hope and heartbreak, narrated by one of the most winning narrators ever to walk off the page.
"The novel is sturdy in its simplicity, a send-up of the cowboy myth that replaces it with something more valuable - a cowboy with heart." - Booklist
"Despite the sometimes wrenching shifts in narrative point of view, Gloss...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
"Not to be missed by fans of this writer and others who love Western-based historical fiction, Gloss's fourth novel will also draw horse lovers although they might be repelled by the revelations about the brutal conditions of early movie making." - Library Journal
"I read Falling from Horses in two gulps. The writing is gorgeous, the setting so beautifully realized, both time and place, the narrative voice unforgettable, and all the characters so real and compelling. Tremendous, page-turning...I could not have loved it more." - Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and The Jane Austen Book Club
"Gloss adeptly brings to life characters in search of the American Dream, while illuminating the "myth of the cowboy West" and the harsh realities that come along with it. A moving story filled with heart and insight by an author whose love of the American landscape rings loudly through each page." - Gail Tsukiyama, author of A Hundred Flowers and The Samurai's Garden
This information about Falling from Horses was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Molly Gloss is the best-selling author The Hearts of Horses, The Jump-Off Creek , winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and the Oregon Book Award, The Dazzle of Day, winner of the PEN Center West Fiction Prize, and Wild Life, winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award.
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