Hattie's Horse

Thirteen-year-old Hattie Thompson is actually delighted with her parent's decision to send her to Montana to live with her grandmother. Hattie adores her grandma and has previously enjoyed a month every summer at Gram's in which she gets to ride and work with Dusty, Gram''s aging cow horse and trained barrel racer. School has closed abruptly and gone to remote learning because of a global pandemic. Her parent's, both doctors working in a Boston hospital, want to protect Hattie from the Covid-19 virus. She can do school remotely from any distance. The only problem with a pandemic, as Hattie sees it, is that it goes on way too long, plenty of time for her to miss her parents and for her troubles to accumulate. When Dusty goes missing along with a runaway boy that Hattie was protecting, Hattie is bereft in the shadow of loss, guilt, and regret. Lessons learned the hard way make this coming-of-age story reflect the reality and responsibilities of growing up.