About the author
Sara Gruen is a Canadian, who moved to the United States in 1999 when she got a technical writing job. When she was made redundant, she decided to write fiction. Her first two novels, Riding Lessons and Flying Changes were both about horses, and are both still in print. Her next novel, Water for Elephants, was about Jacob, a young man who had very nearly qualified as a vet when his parents were killed, leaving him without the funds to complete his training. He found a job with a circus, and as the only character with any sort of moral compass, has a very hard time. Sara Gruen’s next book, Ape House, was about bonobos.
She lives with her family and animals in an environmental community north of Chicago.
Finding the books
Both the books are still in print, and easy to find in both the UK and USA.
Links and sources
Sara Gruen’s website
An interview with Sara Gruen on curledup.com
Wikipedia on Sara Gruen
Bibliography (horse books only)
Riding Lessons
HarperTorch, New York, 2004, 387 pp.
Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2007.
Annemarie Zimmer’s Olympic dreams when her horse injures her in an accident: he is destroyed. She give up riding and horses entirely. Twenty years later, she returns to her family’s horse farm, divorced, and with a troubled teenage daughter, Eve. Annemarie’s mother is fighting hard to keep the farm going, and her father is stricken with Lou Gehrig’s disease. There is a horse there, who
looks worthless, but he reminds Annemarie of her old horse Harry. She has to struggle to heal herself and the horse, and come to term’s with her father’s affliction.
Flying Changes
HarperTorch, New York, 2005, 371 pp.
Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2007.
Annemarie is anxious about everything: that her relationship is stagnating; that her daughter Eva’s equestrian dreams will carry her away. Maple Brook horse farm is changing, and Annemarie has to confront her fears, but it is a tragedy no one anticipates which allows the family to finally ride free.
