Diana Page Jordan | Book Reviews and Inspiration

By Meg Rosoff

Buy on Amazon

Published August 10, 2009 (Hardcover) Viking

More Info: Meg Rosoff

I suppose it was the cover of The Bride’s Farewell that got me — shiny black with filigrees, and a white horse that I’ve known in my dreams.  If you glance quickly, he seems to be a unicorn.  But he’s not.  He is Jack, the horse that young Pell mounts the morning of her wedding day and rides away to her freedom, her mute young brother Bean catching a lift, and refusing to let go of Pell.

Jack carries both to freedom, fifteen-year old Pell not wanting to repeat her mother’s fate — bearing nine children to an alcoholic, womanizing preacher — and Bean is also on his back, the youngest of those children.  The story is set in the 1850′s in rural England, and Pell Ridley’s journey is rugged and cruel, while she seeks love, and to set things right.

As foreign a time and place this is, Meg Rosoff’s magical, down-to-earth tone is powerful.  I read, falling in love with Pell’s strength and with her talents around horses.  Pell’s scrappy life forces her to agree to do whatever work it takes, and she does, she does find love.  Not the kind of love you’d expect.  But she has self-respect, and takes nothing less from those who would hire her.

There’s a girl inside me like Pell — maybe you, too — resilient, driven, unable to capitulate to what is expected of a young woman.  You do what you have to do.  She took care of horses, good as any guy.  I began my radio career when women were just mothers, nurses, and teachers.  More than once, I was told by radio stations they “already had one” and “women don’t like to hear women on the air.”  I convinced the men against their will to hire me –  the second woman — and slowly, these stations were hiring more women.  It was a small quiet revolution.

You do what you have to do.  You do it for love.