The Horse Dancer-Book Review

This story is about a young English girl, Sarah, being raised by her French grandfather who gives her a horse named Boo. I enjoyed it because it opened up a world for me that I knew nothing about: elite horsemanship skills. Her grandfather left a promising career in France to marry an Englishwoman and he hopes to pass on his skills to his granddaughter. But before he can do that, he is stricken with a stroke and hospitalized. Sarah is taken in by a lawyer who is struggling with a failed marriage. The couple is changed by being flung into a parenting role they are not prepared for.

I loved Sarah’s determination to continue what her grandfather was trying to teach her, even though the odds stack up against her. The parallel story of the lawyer with her own life struggles kept me turning pages. While not strictly historical, the novel looks back to the time of an elite French calvary skilled in an art form of dressage dating back over 250 years. That’s the historical part that drew me in, but the characters made me root for them.