**Spoilers ahead**
I listened to this via the Libby App.
This book started off rather slow to me. She lost her farm that had been in her family for a long time. It was kind of sad. She did try to make it work, but couldn’t.
She was offered a place in a environment like a boarding house, but she didn’t want charity.
She decided to take her horse and dog and ride across America. She wanted to get to California. She just needed to stop by Idaho first to deliver a letter to the governor.
She would stop in towns across the US, and people would allow her to set the animals up in the barn and she could stay in various places. Sometimes they wanted money, other times they did not. It became so fascinating to see what was she was going to encounter. Why? Because this is the era when automobiles first started coming out. Riding around on a horse was rather obsolete. Towns were refusing to allow horses on streets.
She had a friend of hers put ads in the newspapers talking about her journey to gain interest. She was fairly well known and people would wait for her to ride into town. One of these towns, she came across a man that provided her with a second horse. His name was Rex. He was not as in shape as the original horse, so it was a learning curve trying to figure it all out.
There was some misfortunes along her journey. He horse being sick by poison, but overcoming it. Then later, Rex got something in his foot that gave him tetanus. The town she was in told her that he was fine and to go ahead and get back on the road. There was no vet available, but she tried.
By the time she reached her next destination, she was greeted by a man that ended up being a vet and he noticed something was wrong right away. He gave Rex the shot, but he did not make it. It was so sad. At this point in the book, you are well attached to her little family. I found myself crying because she had asked for a vet when everything first happened. I also can not handle an animal hurting. It is hard for me.
She wants to give up. She was 180 miles from California, but no longer had the desire to continue. As she was left alone with her thoughts, she started visualizing the faces of everyone that she had met along her journey and realized she needed to continue for them.
She was given another horse. This one named King. Rex means King, so she took it as a sign. They all bonded right away with him, and felt like they all knew each other.
She made it into California, and was excited. She found herself on the Art Linkletter show.
At the end of her life, she ended up back in Maine. Her horse, Tarzan did not make it back to Maine. The dog was not mentioned. She passed away in her home state.
#bookreview, #BasedOnATrueStory, #ElizabethLetts, #Letts, #HistoricalFacts, #InterestingFacts, #UnitedStates, #History, #TheRideOfHerLife
Vintage Dava 