Riding Lessons by Sara Gruen

Not the spectacular work that Water for Elephants is, but not bad for a first effort. It's a bit predictable. The story begins with a classic triple whammy: Annemarie loses her job, her husband leaves her for a sweet young thing, and she learns that her father has Lou Gehrig's disease - all within the space of a day or so. So she packs up herself and her obnoxious teenage daughter and heads back home to "help."

Everything goes from bad to worse. She takes over the management of her father's stables and proceeds to run it into the ground. She alienates both her mother and daughter, and can't bring herself to have anything to do with her dying father. To top it all off, she runs off her old boyfriend whose wife has died and wants to reconnect.

Then there is the horse. It seems that the only being that she has every loved unreservedly was the remarkable horse she had when her father had been grooming her for the Olympics. In an accident in competition, she was nearly killed and the horse was injured badly enough that he was put down. Now she encounters his near double - and thereby hangs the tale.

Gruen goes a bit beyond the "and they all lived happily ever after" and brings Annemarie to the realization that she has to take responsibility for the disasters that she has caused through her own failure to grow up. So the happy ending feels quite satisfying, if a little pat.

It certainly kept me reading - if only to find out what she would screw up next. In fact, I probably will look for more of Gruen's earlier work.