About the author
Deborah Kent (b.1948) grew up in Little Falls, New Jersey. After 8th grade, she was educated in a mainstream school, having previously been taught in classes for blind children, as she is totally blind. Her experiences adapting to a mainstream school formed the basis for her first young adult story, Belonging, and her experiences with disability have featured in several of her other novels. Despite being told that making a living as a writer was almost impossible, she was not daunted, and after training and working as a social worker, she left to pursue writing full time. Many of her books are non fiction, dealing with the history and geography of America. Her horse-based series sees four different girls and their horses making sense of their worlds at differing periods of American history.
Finding the books
The books are reasonably easy to find in both the USA and UK, having been published in both, though pricing can be erratic for used copies.
Links and sources
Deborah Kent at Macmillan
Deborah Kent on Answers.com
Series
Saddles, Stars & Stripes (USA)/Saddle the Wind (UK)
Blackwater Creek
Chance of a Lifetime
Riding the Pony Express
On the Edge of Revolution
Bibliography (horse books only)
Blackwater Creek
Kingfisher, Boston, 2005, 151 pp
Kingfisher, London, 2005, 151 pp
Set in 1849, Hungarian immigrant Erika Nagy helps to pay off her family’s rent arrears. She works for a rancher while her brother and father prospect for gold in California. When a horse runs away, Erika finds the horse, and
a gold claim.
Chance of a Lifetime
Kingfisher, Boston, 2005, 172 pp
Kingfisher, London, 2005, 172 pp
Jacquetta May Logan rescues some of her family’s Morgan horses so they aren’t sent to war with the Yankees. Jacquetta’s home has been turned into a hospital. What happens to her during the war changes her views on
slavery.
Riding the Pony Express
Kingfisher, Boston, 2005, 149 pp
Kingfisher, London, 2006, 149 pp
As Sur la Piste du Pony-Express, Castor Poche-Flammarion, 2008
Lexie is 15 when her father dies. Her brother, once a Pony Express Rider, is wanted for robbery. Lexie has a stark choice: go back East, but without her horse, or disguise herself as a boy and try and clear her brother’s name.
On the Edge of Revolution
Kingfisher, Boston, 2006, 160 pp
Kingfisher, London, 2006, 162 pp
Eliza Carter works for her father during the summer holidays, with her team of horses, led by her Conestoga horse, Clipper. However, life changes dramatically when Eliza’s twin brother joins in the armed resistance against the British. Eliza is not sure where she will stand if full blown revolution comes.
