Annette Turngren

The Mystery of the Water Witch

Random House, New York, 1955

Random House, New York, 1964, illus Harvey Woolhiser, 153 pp. American Girl Library edn (right)

Jed is paying his way through college through the horse Water Witch.  A black trick horse, the money she earns
through her movie roles is vital to Jed.  However, one day she disappears.

Annette Turngren was brought up on a grain and dairy farm in Minnesota.  The youngest of nine children, she was the daughter of Swedish parents.  As a child, she was a keen writer, and filled many of her father’s ledgers with half-completed novels.  Her teachers suggested she become a journalist, but after waiting outside the offices of the Minneapolis Journal for a day, unable to pluck up the courage to go in, she shelved that idea, and instead studied English at university.  She worked as a teacher, but never gave up the idea of writing.  Her first novel was Flaxen Braids, the story of her mother.  She followed this with several other children’s stories, one of which The Mystery of the Water Witch, has some horse content.

Finding the book:  the book is easy to find in the USA.  

Sources and links:

Annette Turngren’s papers are in the University of Oregon Libraries

Terri A. Wear:  Horse Stories, an Annotated Bibilography, Scarecrow Press, 1987

Many thanks to Lisa Catz for the photograph .

Bibliography - horse books only