![]() ![]() ![]() Dusty also copes with outsider status at school and misses her only friend, now at boarding school in Melbourne. A three-year drought drastically reduces the family's income-and dramatically alters Dusty's father, who withdraws into the temporary solace of alcohol. ![]() While Dusty and the Snow Pony triumph at various competitions, the scope of the novel extends beyond horse-mania. Most of all, Dusty loves the Snow Pony, which she and her father found wild near their mountain property and brought back to their ranch, and which Dusty herself has trained (horse-story enthusiasts will thrill to the classic encounter in which the wild pony, having bucked the experienced adults, permits Dusty to ride her). Resourceful, responsible Dusty Riley loves working alongside her father, a proud, fourth-generation cattle farmer, and her mother, a former showjumping champion who now trains other people's horses. As in The Quicksand Pony, picture book author/artist Lester sets her multifaceted second novel on an Australian cattle farm. ![]()
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