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| Edition: | Pearson ESL (Paperback) |
| Author: | Nicholas Evans |
| Published: | February 2000 |
| Pages: | 86 |
| ISBN 10: | 058241637X |
| New: | $26.48 (6) |
| Used: | $0.01 (16) |
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The Horse Whisperer is a 1995 novel by Nicholas Evans. Tom, a talented trainer with a remarkable gift for understanding horses, is hired to help an injured teenager and her horse back to health following a tragic accident.
Plot
Teenager Grace MacLean and her best friend Judith go out early one winter's morning to ride their horses. As they are riding up an icy slope, one of the horses falls, dragging both horses and girls onto a road where a truck appears, resulting in a horrific collision. Judith and her horse (Gulliver) are killed, while Grace and her horse (Pilgrim) are both severely injured.
Grace eventually recovers physically, though she is left with a partial leg amputation and remains listless and psychologically scarred and prone to anger. However, her horse is traumatized and uncontrollable to the extent that it is suggested he be put down. Grace's mother, Annie, a brilliant editor, refuses to make the decision and the animal is left to suffer for some time.
Meanwhile, Annie and her husband Robert have serious marital problems of their own. Robert is rather self-centered, emotionally unsupportive of Annie in general, and he disparages Annie's desire to help Pilgrim survive and recover. Annie has grown apart from Robert in the past few years and neither are sure they love each other anymore.
Knowing that it is up to her to heal both her daughter and her daughter's horse, Annie contacts Tom Booker (Redford), a "Horse Whisperer", who agrees to help, on the condition that the despondent Grace takes part in the process. Since Tom is reluctant to fly from Montana to New York, Annie must pack a struggling Pilgrim and a moody, combative Grace into her own car and trailer and drive thousands of miles westward to the Booker ranch.
It's also a matter of two subcultures meeting when a determined, sophisticated, uptight Annie talks a laid-back, relaxed, calm Tom into helping heal Pilgrim. Annie is fearful of the unfamiliar open spaces of ranch life and the dark, dark nights without signs, restaurants, stores, or good lighting. She is also apprehensive about this alien, strange culture that she and her daughter have entered. However, as with most of her many fears and insecurity, Annie masks it behind a know-it-all bravado, which Grace calls her on.
As for the small-town Booker family, they are curious about Annie and Grace. Diane wonders out loud where on earth Annie is from since Annie's accent sounds so foreign and strange to her; never have the Bookers met someone as exotic as Annie nor are they at all familiar with the sophisticated, intellectual, streetwise city world that she and Grace live in.
But since Tom briefly lived in Chicago, he somewhat understands Annie's city world and her sophistication; he also is the first to sense that lurking underneath her steely bravado, controlled exterior, and grittiness are many deep fears and a low self-esteem.
As Tom and Grace work with Pilgrim, it becomes clear that Annie also has unhealed psychological wounds to deal with; the country life makes that glaringly clear when Annie comes to realize that she cannot run from her fears and issues forever and must begin to face them down instead of hiding from them behind a know-it-all coat of armor. She also realizes that she has been afraid to pursue her true dream she's carried since her childhood...to become an author.
Matters are complicated more when Annie begins to fall in love with Tom, which forces her to realize that she must do something about her dysfunctional marriage to Robert, another issue she has been afraid to confront.
Pilgrim and Grace slowly heal and overcome their trauma while Annie and Tom are faced with a potentially sticky situation when they are attracted to each other and Robert shows up on the ranch unexpectedly.
Robert suspects Tom is attracted to Annie and although he is cordial with Tom, inside he is fuming and privately makes some rather cruel remarks to Annie questioning whether she ever really loved him.
Annie and Tom know they must make the painful decision to part, that it would not be right to have an affair just then since Tom does not wish to be entangled in the Macleans' serious marital problems; he knows Annie must settle things with Robert one way or another.
Annie understands this also and in tears, hugs Tom goodbye. Although part of her wishes she could stay on the ranch permanently, deep down inside, she knows she cannot, that Grace needs her, she must bring Pilgrim home again, and that her true home is in New York City. She understands that she would not be happy living a ranch life for long. In addition, she knows that yes, she must settle things with Robert and decide whether to continue this sham of a marriage or divorce Robert and raise Grace singly.
Tom watches a tearful Annie start back home, and fears that Grace and Pilgrim's accident has forced her to face her own emotional scars.
- Tom Booker: Sometimes what seems like surrender isn't surrender at all. It's about what's going on in our hearts. About seeing clearly the way life is and accepting it and being true to it, whatever the pain, because the pain of not being true to it is far, far greater.
- Annie Maclean: Look, please don't do the shucks, maam thing again, Mr Booker...
