I'm happy to announce that Turning For Home (Alex and Alexander Book 4) is now available!
This new installment of these "Horse Books for Grown-ups," which began back in 2011 with the publication of The Head and Not The Heart, then continued with the 2014 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award semi-finalist, Other People's Horses and the holiday short Claiming Christmas, returns to the dark bay beauty that Alex fell so hard for at Aqueduct Racetrack, The Tiger Prince.
 |
| Because grown-ups deserve pony stories too! |
The charismatic Tiger has run his last race, and it wasn't pretty. Alex is faced with an agonizing decision: how can she retire a hot-tempered gelding who has no place on a breeding farm, but is such a pet that he can't be sold or adopted out?
Then, as if life wasn't complicated enough, another scandal is breaking over the racing industry. Racehorses are found abandoned and starving in the Everglades -- and a radical animal rights group pins the blame on Alex. Hate mail and death threats, plus a mysterious new neighbor who is making life downright dangerous, throw Alex's training career into a tailspin.
Stuck on the farm, exiled from the racetrack, angry and shell-shocked, Alex and Tiger have more in common than ever. When a Thoroughbred Makeover event is announced for late spring, Alexander and Kerri both encourage Alex to seize the opportunity and show everyone that she's fully capable of responsible racehorse retirement. It's a move that could make -- or break -- her training career.
Turning For Home returns to some of my favorite places: the rolling hills of Ocala, the small-town feel of Tampa Bay Downs. And it takes on one of my favorite subjects, racehorse retirement. That's actually what got me started in this whole writing game, you know -- writing Retired Racehorse Blog back when I had a little Florida farm, some broodmares and foals, and one wonderful gelding that I'd gotten off the track and was training to be an event horse.
I actually trained that horse, in part, to prove to myself that I still could do it. I guess in that way, I'm a lot like Alex in this story. Is retraining a racehorse like riding a bike? At some point, muscle memory kicks in, right?
It seemed that way for me, when I was out riding Final Call. I used the memory of those rides to write about Alex as she rides Tiger.
I hope that helps the story ring true for equestrians -- that's always my number one goal as a writer! And according to this review at Amazon, looks like I have...
"I've always known Natalie Keller Reinert is one of the rare authors who truly understands the ways of the Thoroughbred horse (and of the people who love them), but either she has truly outdone herself here, or else I just love this book because it's more about retraining an Off-The-Track Thoroughbred ("OTTB" for short) once its racing days are done, and that end of a Thoroughbred's life is much more familiar to me than the racing side. Ms. Reinert is fortunate enough to have had plenty of experience on both the racing side and the sport horse side, and she brings it ALL to this book. Her writing is confident, her perceptions accurate, and her characters are so alive that I found myself mentally arguing with them over their choices as I read. :-) I really could not recommend this book more highly for horse lovers!"
Enjoy Turning For Home, and be sure to let me know what you think! You can read the first chapter at my website, nataliekreinert.com, or check out the previews available wherever you buy ebooks. The paperback is also available from Amazon.com.
1 comment:
Sounds wonderful, Natalie - good luck!
Post a Comment