Horses were a gift; how many people have such a constant in their life, separate from the rough and often beautiful mess that is their family?
Anton Disclafani, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls
She has grown up in happy isolation, a doctor's daughter, in rural Florida. She spends her days with her beloved horse, her twin brother, her parents and occasionally her cousin, Georgie, and his parents. She has been educated at home. What Thea did to warrant exile to a girls camp Disclafani keeps a secret for most of the novel, leaking out subtle clues here and there. The truth turns out to be even more shocking than what the reader may have imagined.
Yet what happens at the riding camp becomes more shocking still. as Thea, who narrates her own story, pursues the handsome headmaster while his wife is away trying to raise money for the school. This teenage girl, like most of the rest of us, behaves shamefully one minute and heroically the next. For all the tension in this novel, the tension the author maintains between good and bad may be her greatest achievement.
Disclafani makes the Depression a significant part of her story. The girls at the camp come from wealthy families, yet some of these families lose their wealth during this period, and Thea's family is also impacted and must move into a smaller home, one without horses. While at the camp, Thea only wants to go home, yet a year later, when she is exiled back to her parents, her home and the ideal life she once knew there no longer exist.
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