Horses Never Lie About Love by Jana Harris

Horses Never Lie About Love
Author: Jana Harris
Publisher: Free Press
Hardbound: 279 pgs
ISBN: 9781451605846
Genre: Non-fiction, nature, horses

Description

When Jana Harris moved with her husband to Washington State for a teaching job, she realized that she could also fulfill her lifelong dream of having a horse farm. And Harris knew the horse on whom she could build her dreams the minute she saw her on a ranch in the Eastern Mountains where a herd had been corralled to be sold: a beautiful, deep dark red–colored mare known as a blood bay, standing about sixteen hands, with a pretty head with a white star and a narrow stripe that slid down her face to two black nostrils. Something about the way the mare guarded her handsome foal, a black two-month-old 200-pound colt, spoke to Harris. The mare was named True Colors.

But when True Colors was delivered to Harris's ranch three months later, she was unrecognizable. She had gone feral, run away, and been recaptured. Terrified of people, she was head-shy from the infected sores on her face and her lungs were damaged by smoke-induced pneumonia. She sensed demons hiding in everything from the scent of fabric softener on clothes to a gate in a fence. Her will to escape was enormous. This injured, traumatized horse existed between two worlds—wild and domesticated—and belonged to neither. But there were glimmers of hope: The other horses fell in love with her on sight, just as Harris had. And true to her name and herself, True Colors would never pretend to be something she was not; with her wise, intuitive nature, she would end up changing the lives of everyone she encountered, animal and human.

Horses Never Lie About Love is the story of this remarkable horse and the revelations about life and love that she gave Harris over the course of their decades together. Now thirty-three years old, this complex, magnetic animal retains the outsize personality that transforms everyone around her, both human and equine. True Colors has grown to become the heart of the range and the farm, her quiet wisdom transmitting a strength of character that transcends the thin line between animals and the humans they love. There is a famous horseman's saying: A horse never lies about its pain. But maybe we should also consider: A horse never lies about love. 

My Thoughts:

A true heart-warming and heart-tugging story of a woman's life changing journey with her horse, True Colors. What should have been a simple purchase of a pregnant mare and colt ended up being something that the author, Jana Harris, would never have imagined. The deceit of the sellers and the rescue of a mare ends up teaching what real love is.

This book is so beautifully written and will have the reader (horse lover or not) totally in love with True Colors by then end of the book. I cannot sing the praises of how amazing this book is. Animals aren't supposed to have human qualities or souls, but after reading this book the reader will convinced otherwise.

Highly recommended!!

About the Author:

Jana Harris—poet, novelist, short story writer, and essayist—teaches creative writing at the University of Washington and is a Washington State Governor's Writers Award and Andres Berger Award winner as well as a PEN West Center Award finalist. She won a Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2001 and is editor and founder of Switched-on Gutenberg, one of the first—and longest-lived--electronic global poetry journals. She lives in the Cascade Mountains with her husband, where they raise horses.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher to read and honestly review.