Showing results for "The Dream" in Riding & Horsemanship

Few will hire competitive rider, Viola Parker, since the famous jumper, Wastrel, crashed to his death with her aboard. Not only that, her attitude just landed her out of work...again. She can barely afford her whipped-cream-in-a-can addiction. Now, before she's 30, she must keep a job for one year and receive a glowing letter of recommendation to get a surprise trust fund set up by her absentee parents. A trust fund that could represent freedom and independence - or might be worth nothing.

On the morning of May 18, 1924, households across America opened their newspapers to the headline: "Derby Winner Property of Indian Woman." The woman in question was Rosa Magnet Hoots, a member of the Oklahoma Osage Nation. The horse, draped in the iconic red roses signifying his victory in the fiftieth running of the Kentucky Derby, was Black Gold. Named for the oil that had been discovered in large quantities in Oklahoma at the time of his birth, Black Gold was born in 1921 to a mare named Useeit.

Vi's kept a job for nearly one year and is sure she's going ride off into the sunset with her trust fund, but ghost horse Wastrel has plans that put everything she's worked for in jeopardy....Viola Parker knows old wounds can fester. What she doesn't know is how deeply they can cut or to what lengths people will go to recover. When she returns to her roots to solve her mentor's murder, nothing and no one is what they seem and no amount of whipped cream makes sense of it.

This is a story about leaving home to chase a dream that was so deep in my bones I couldn’t quit, even when it nearly killed me. It’s about the horse who held my heart suddenly disappearing. It’s about love finding me when I least expected it. And it’s about learning to trust a God who gives and takes away.

Are you frustrated because your dream hasn't come true? When you took actions that didn't work out did you get stuck? Are you tempted to abandon your dream forever? Don't! Another choice can lead you to ultimate happiness. Author Janet Wolanin Alexander has been there and knows how you feel. In her memoir At Home on a Horse in the Woods, she shares how alternating bouts of pursuit and denial became incredibly paralyzing. Finally, on the verge of abandoning her dream forever, a powerful moment of truth broke her pattern and set her free.