THE YEAR OF THE HORSES

A despondent writer finds solace on horseback.

Novelist Maum has loved horses from the age of 5, when her wish to Santa was answered in the form of a large rocking horse. Wishing harder the next year, she finally got a pony of her own. But she stopped riding when she was 9, when her parents’ divorce and her younger brother’s life-threatening illness shut down the expensive and time-consuming pleasure. Maum’s forthright, searching memoir centers on her rediscovery of her “joyful, weird, magical” love of horses and her gradual emergence from debilitating depression, insomnia, and overwhelming sadness. At the age of 37, she was a productive writer, married to a French filmmaker, mother of a young daughter, living in a charming New England town. “That I felt sadness was undeniable,” she admits, “but I felt no right to claim it.” A therapist helped her reflect on her past to find the source of the fears, perfectionism, and competitiveness that dogged her throughout her life and threatened her marriage and her relationship with her daughter. But Maum was drawn, besides, to engage in something physical, an activity so consuming that, she hoped, it would open up “an escape from my domestic life.” Impulsively, she decided to take riding lessons, which proved more challenging—and more rewarding—than she had anticipated. “Frequently referred to as a ‘stealth therapy,’ ” she learned, “interaction with horses has been known to benefit people who struggle with anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, and fearfulness because horses mirror human emotions. If you aren’t calm, the horse won’t be, either, and denial doesn’t get you far with a herd animal.” Maum’s pleasure in riding led her to polo—“something that I wasn’t good at, that made me afraid,” and for which she needed to learn a new set of skills, including the ability just to have fun.

A sensitive, well-rendered chronicle of healing.