The Language of Hoofbeats

Written by Catherine Ryan Hyde

When a troubled girl steals a horse, her foster moms are thrown together with their reluctant neighbor in this award-winning novel from New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde.

From the bestselling author of Pay It Forward comes a story of the heartbreak and healing power of family. New to a small town, Jackie and Paula envision a quiet life for their kids: a young adopted son and two teenage foster children, including the troubled Star. However, they quickly butt heads with their neighbor, Clementine, who disapproves of their lifestyle and is incensed when Star befriends her spirited horse, Comet. Haunted by past tragedy and unable to properly care for Comet, Clem nevertheless resents the bond Star soon shares with the horse. When Star disappears with Comet, the neighbors are thrown together—far too close together. But as the search for the pair wears on, both families must learn to put aside their animosity and confront the choices they’ve made and the scars they carry. Plumbing the depths of regret and forgiveness, The Language of Hoofbeats explores the strange alchemy that transforms a group of people into a family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Dec 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491533642

Catherine Ryan Hyde

Catherine Ryan Hyde is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and #1 Amazon Charts bestselling author of more than forty books and counting. An avid traveler, equestrian, and amateur photographer, she shares her astrophotography with readers on her website. Her novel Pay It Forward was adapted into a major motion picture, chosen by the American Library Association (ALA) for its Best Books for Young Adults list, and translated into more than twenty-three languages for distribution in over thirty countries. Both Becoming Chloe and Jumpstart the World were included on the ALA’s Rainbow Book List, and Jumpstart the World was a finalist for two Lambda Literary Awards. Where We Belong won two Rainbow Awards in 2013, and The Language of Hoofbeats won a Rainbow Award in 2015. More than fifty of her short stories have been published in the Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and many other journals; in the anthologies Santa Barbara Stories and California Shorts; and in the bestselling anthology Dog Is My Copilot. Her stories have been honored by the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest and the Tobias Wolff Award and have been nominated for The Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize. Three have been cited in the annual The Best American Short Stories anthology. She is the founder and former president (2000–2009) of the Pay It Forward Foundation. As a professional public speaker, she has addressed the National Conference on Education, twice spoken at Cornell University, met with AmeriCorps members at the White House, and shared a dais with Bill Clinton. For more information, please visit the author at www.catherineryanhyde.com.

Reviews for The Language of Hoofbeats

[Shawna · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great story line and was kept on edge of seat!

[l ekelund · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

this was my book by this author. I loved the way the layers were stacking up. You will, I hope manage to get past the grumpy voice. It is well worth the effort.

[sueincyprus · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

‘The Language of Hoofbeats’, based in California, is told from two different viewpoints. The main one is Jackie, a foster-mother who, at the start of the book, is travelling with her family to a new home; alternative chapters are narrated by Clem, a cantankerous elderly woman, who lives over the road. The writing is excellent, the characters well-drawn and believable, and the story moves apace. I started reading a chapter or two at bedtime, but by the time I was half-way through I could barely put it down. There’s much to ponder in this book: issues of prejudice and stereotypes come up several times, and the point is made that nobody should judge anyone by appearance. Highly recommended.

[Alma Quillian · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I think Ms. Hyde is brilliant in her character development and unique stories of love and growth.She creates such unique characters. Frankly,I think she is a genius. Yet another totally enjoyable book full of love,pain and how we help each other with both

[Angela Renzi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I am and always will be a horse lover so this title grabbed my attention from the title alone. It has been awhile since I have totally fallen in love with a book and this one is definitely it. To me it has all of the great elements that a good book should have. It was hard to put down every time I hit pause I couldn't wait to hit play again to find out what happened next.

[Trudy McBreairty Fuller · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love all Catherine Ryan Hyde's books, the stories all touch my heart in so many different ways. My all time favorite is Allie & Bea. All her books are GREAT reads! You wont be disappointed. ❤❤❤❤

[Lori Sampson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The book was good, but the audio version had several sections that didn’t work and you missed a portion of the book. Very frustrating.

[nyiper · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I always feel sad when I'm about to finish a Catherine Ryan Hyde novel....I love her writing style and her characters are so appealing! Her books have all kinds of messages about human kindness......

[majesdane-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is what would happen if Lifetime and Hallmark had a baby. And I really can't say that I minded. Sure, it's cheesy and very feel-goody in that sugar sweet, heartwarming way. But it was fun. And I have to admit a few times I actually teared up because it was so nice to read something so sweet. And it was surprisingly diverse and covered a lot of heavy issues well. Sure, everything works out and the ending is all nice and pat, and I knew it would be so, but I honestly think I would have been disappointed if it had ended any other way.

[claudia.anderson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

predictable but very tender; good ending

[heatherlinc · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"The Language of Hoofbeats" was a heartwarming story of grief, healing, forgiveness, prejudices and second chances, and from the start I was hooked. I loved the characters the author created; all were realistic and many were flawed, but I found myself caring deeply for them all. I especially loved Quinn and Mando. Both boys were so gentle and sympathetic, and very sensitive to what was going on around them. This is not an action packed book, instead it looks at the complexity of human relationships and what it means to be a family. A delightful read.

[katsmiao · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I expected great things from this book, not just because I expected something like Pay It Forward, but also because the premise of the book intrigued me.

I was let down though. Thecharacters were odd....very flat, without any depth, and the whole thing was very predictable.

[terran_9 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book. It is a positive take on the foster system, for a change. Jackie and Paula have an adopted son and two foster children when they move to a new home when Paula takes over the local veterinary practice. They almost immediately have a conflict with their nearest neighbor who owns a horse that is being neglected. Star, their foster daughter, gets on the wrong side of the neighbor by trespassing in order to approach the horse. I especially appreciated the details and accuracy about horses and horse care in the book. I felt that the family relationships were portrayed in a realistic way, without being sugar-coated. Each person has his or her own baggage which causes bad first impressions and misunderstandings, but it all works out satisfactorily.

[sharn_3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was an easy story to read. It's story of love and redemption.Paula and Jackie are foster moms to 2 children, Mando and Star. They are also the adoptive parents of the oh so lovable Quinn. When they move to a new town they quickly meet the neighbor, Clementine, who is not very kind... to anyone.When Clementine's husband, Vernon, calls it quits and leaves her, she is forced to take care of things alone, including the horse, Comet.One thing leads to another and Clementine is forced to take a look at who she's become and she forms a strong bond with the most unlikely person in the story. People can change, at least a little.With that said, there were things about the story that bothered me when I read it, like Clementine was over-the-top mean and Paula seemed to be perfect but those are minor details in a good story

[hollysing · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Twenty minutes into a Catherine Ryan Hyde book and I am engaged and relaxed. Her talent for bringing disparate groups of people together and forming a bond between them is well established. Her characters are flawed, but grow through their relationships with others willing to walk outside of their own backyards. She creates un-conventional, intricate families. Her prose is clean. Her stories ramp up quickly coalescing into touching and emotional situations.The Language of Hoofbeats brims with warmth and compassion. Jackie and Paula, a lesbian couple, move to a quiet town with their adopted son, Quinn, and two foster teenage children, Armando and Star. Paula, a veterinarian, hopes to set up a large new practice in Easley, CA. Jackie mourns their departure from their beloved Napa Valley. Their elderly neighbor owns a horse, Comet. Troubled Star bonds with the horse, bringing about unusual circumstances. Star and Comet play pivotal roles in bringing Clementine together with her new neighbors.The book is narrated in the first person, alternating between Clementine and Jackie. Each individual’s past and it’s bearing on their present situation is sympathetically written. Unusual partners team up to protect the innocents, as with many of Hyde’s other books. I’ve read six Catherine Ryan Hyde books and can attest to the worth of each one. Highly recommended.I thank Netgalley for the advance review copy provided for my unbiased opinion.

[mishker-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Jackie and Paula move their family, an adopted son and two foster children away from the city to a rural area where Paula will be the veterinarian. They expect some trouble with their different lifestyle, but they find trouble too quickly within their only neighbor, Clementine. Clementine, who disapproves of pretty much everything, does not like that a married lesbian couple now live across the street, she does not like that they have foster kids of varying nationalities and she especially does not like that one of their newer foster kids, Star, has taken a liking to her daughter's horse, Comet. Clementine's daughter passed tragically, and Comet is Clementine's last tie to her only child. Star has an instant connection with Comet, and instinctively knows that the horse is not well taken care of and does her best to give Comet what she needs. When Star and Comet both disappear, the two families are thrown together and forced to overcome their differences and heal. A heart-warming and intensive family drama that deals with grief, loss, healing and forgiveness. The Language of Hoofbeats had me hooked from the first chapters. The point of view switches from Jackie to Clementine, the two characters who need to let go of their faults and the faults in others. Clementine is such an interesting character, I just had to know what her story was. Watching her transformation and healing process was amazing. The interactions between Clementine and Paula and Jackie's family were beautifully written and very raw, there are no perfect solutions here, just real people dealing with a lot of different emotions. Star's relationship with Comet was touching and was a wonderful device for understanding and healing. As a horse lover, I had no trouble relating to Star's feelings for Comet.This book was received for free in return for an honest review.

[whitreidtan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Family. Most of us are lucky enough to have a pretty good, rather innocuous family life. But there are lots of kids out there who aren't so lucky. They can't live with their parent or parents for a variety of reasons. The luckiest among them are placed in loving foster situations but even the luckiest are indelibly marked by the experiences in their earlier lives that pulled them away from their mothers and landed them in the uncertain limbo of being a foster child. The best foster families are the ones who truly become families, embracing the children living with them for as long as they need a stable and safe home. But even these created families aren't always the right fit for a child, no matter how much love and tolerance they find. Catherine Ryan Hyde writes of one unconventional family with two moms, an adopted son who was once their foster child, and two foster children, one of whom is new to their family and a handful to boot in her new novel The Language of Hoofbeats. Jackie and Paula, along with their three children and their crazy menagerie of animals are moving to rural California so that Paula can take up a new veterinary practice. Jackie is leery of the place, worried about judgments (she and Paula are married), struggling with their newest foster child, Star, who is angry and standoffish, and unimpressed by the nasty, cantankerous, unhappy neighbor, Clementine, across the street. Star is prickly but when she sees the high strung, neglected horse across the street, she feels called to him. She knows that he needs to be cared for more than Clem is willing or capable of doing. Clem is terrified of Comet but since he was her late daughter's horse, she is not willing to let go of him. She too knows that the horse needs more than she can give but she forbids Star to come around, warning her off the property. The only recourse Star can see is to take the horse and disappear with him, give him the chance to run, to be free. With Star and Comet's disappearance and the ongoing search for them before something terrible happens, Clem must draw closer to the family across the road despite her misgivings and prejudices. The novel is narrated in turns by Jackie and by Clem, neither of whom is a fan of the other. Jackie's narration allows the reader to see inside their family's life, to know sweet Quinn, who is terrified of losing his J-Mom and P-Mom like he lost his late biological parents, and to know Mando who is hurting and reluctantly thawing out for Paula and Jackie when he realizes that want him to be reconciled with his mother, who has done nothing wrong besides be the victim of racism which unfairly landed in jail. Jackie's narration also allows the reader to see the kind and gentle love that she and Paula offer to the kids who live with them as well as the regular and normal family life they lead together. Clem's narration shows the tragedy of her daughter's suicide and the shock of her husband's leaving her because of her inability to be happy or to like anything. It gives a reason for her attachment to the neglected horse pacing a corral in her front yard and it shows her revelation, by fits and starts, that she is disliked, feared, and avoided by pretty much everyone in town, a revelation that inspires her to want to change if she can. The novel is chock full of current issues: lesbianism, racism, mental illness, suicide, foster care, the judicial system, and adoption to name a few. With so many, it's hard to delve into each of them to the extent that they deserve. But each issue highlights the need, hard as it sometimes is, for tolerance and acceptance, to look beyond the surface and to help each person in this world feel their full worth as a human being. This is a tale of broken hearts healed by love, how we define family, the importance of community, and finding what we need in this world. It is a nice, feel good read that reminds us we all have unhappiness in our lives but we also have the ability to find a way through those trials with the help of those around us and that help finding our place comes in many different forms.

[toobusyreading · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a feel-good novel that deals with hard situations including children in foster care. There were no great surprises, no huge ah-ha moments, but it was a lovely book to read. The emotional ramp-up is fast and touching.A couple moves to a small community because of a job opportunity, and takes their three children - one already adopted and two fostered. And, of course, one of the children is especially difficult, but no more difficult than the strident, abrasive woman who lives across the street with her wild and neglected horse.A heads-up for animal lovers: When I know a book is going to include animals, I am always afraid of explicit animal abuse, something I cannot handle well. In this story, the horse was neglected and not happy, but there was no intentional cruelty. There were other animals in the story, too. Not key players, but they added to the atmosphere.This is a story about family, about whether broken hearts can be mended, and whether this family has the strength to do that."They're kids. No matter how you raise them, they're going to take a cruise through StupidLand." Ain't that the truth?On one listing, I saw that it was listed in the "gay and lesbian" category. That characterization might be off-putting to some people, but it shouldn't be. This isn't about a gay couple. It is about a family in which the parents happen to be gay, but still about family, and the challenges of being part of one. No sex, just a showing of affection. Nothing that anyone except the most homophobic should find.I loved the looks into the minds of the children, and especially Quinn's treatment of and reaction to the irascible neighbor, who tells us her story in the first person. One of the parents is also told in the first person, but not the other, and I'm curious why the author chose to do that.This was a refreshing and touching story that left a smile on my face.I was given an advance readers copy of this book for review. The quote may have changed in the published edition.