Friday Wish-List: A Girl and Five Brave Horses

When I was a child my little sister and I used to drive my brother insane watching the movie 'Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken' over and over and over again.

He still talks about it when we all get together. I don't think he's ever fully recovered from it. :)

Well, the other day I was poking around the blog of a woman who had made a comment on my personal blog and I discovered that the movie, which was based on a true story, was actually inspired by the memoir of Sonora Webster Carver.

I was so excited I could barely type an appropriate comment. What luck! What joy! It's like the day I discovered the 'The Princess Bride' was also a book.

I ran over to Amazon to poke around and add 'A Girl and Five Brave Horses' to my wishlist.

So, what's all my fuss about? Well, I do admit a childish love of all things equine, but also it is the pull of an incredible, and real, story of a young woman during the Great Depression.

"Carver answered an ad placed by "Doc" William Frank Carver in 1923 for a diving girl and soon earned a place in circus history. Her job was to mount a running horse as it reached the top of a forty-foot (sometimes sixty-foot) tower and sail down along the animal's back as it plunged into a deep pool of water directly below."

Sonora's job was immensely dangerous and equally as thrilling, and things went pretty well for her until an accident rendered her blind.

But that's the catch! You would think that being blind would end her career.... jumping onto racing horses being something easier done when you can see... it didn't. Sonora, instead learned to dive the horses by sound and feel and continued doing so for 11 years!

To me as a child this was a exhilarating story of triumphing over life's hardships and choosing to learn from your trials instead of being broken by them.

I'm moving this book to the top of my 'to read' list. I hope you do too!


Books: A Girl and Five Brave Horses by Sonora Carver
            The Princess Bride by William Goldman