About the author
Armine von Tempski (1892–1943) was born in Hawaii, which proved a lifelong inspiration. She spent her early life on the Haleakala Cattle Ranch, which she and her sister turned into a dude ranch to keep it going after her father’s death in 1921. She wanted to make others see her beloved Hawaii as she did, and said: “The desire grew within me to write a literature of Hawai’i that was authentic, to picturize the life as I, a child of the Isles, knew it.” Two of her books were horse stories, reflecting her own childhood and early life.
Finding the books
The reprints are very easy to find; the originals are harder, and very good copies can be expensive.
Links and sources
Armine von Tempski on Wikipedia
Terri Wear: Horse Stories: An Annotated Bibliography
Bibliography (horse books only)
Bright Spurs
Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, 1946, 283 pp, illus Paul Brown
Ox Bow Press, Connecticut, 1993, 283 pp.
Gay, 17, and her younger sister, Cherry, never knew their mother, and have now lost their father. They have always lived on a large ranch in Hawaii, and Gay is the top rated rider on the island. She is determined to hang on to the ranch by turning it into a dude ranch, and taking people horseback riding up the old extinct volcano.
Pam‘s Paradise Ranch
Dodd Mead & Company, New York, 1940, 333 pp, illus Paul Brown
Ox Bow Press, Connecticut, 1993, 283 pp.
Pamela lives with her widowed mother on their huge Hawaiian ranch, where everybody practically lives on horseback. She knows very few people her own age. She thinks her cousin Emily, who is coming to stay from Boston, will be no fun. Although Emily is overwhelmed at the beginning, she has a
quiet courage of her own, and in the end a heroic act on her part is the final step to winning Pam over.
