WILD GIRL

Five years ago, when she was seven, Lidie’s mother died and her father and brother left to train racehorses in America without her. In Brazil Lidie could quarrel with her cantankerous uncle, sing in her aunt’s colorful kitchen or gallop horses up and down the hills, but when she finally gets to America she can’t find words to express her anger, longing and frustration. Her well-meaning brother has painted her new room candy pink and decorated it with baby pictures, which she hates, and her silent father buys a broken-down school horse to teach her to ride. At school her lack of English has mortifying consequences. Only in her father’s unsettled filly, the aptly named Wild Girl, does she find a kindred spirit—and Lidie begins to think that if only she could ride Wild Girl, everything will be all right. As usual, Giff’s characters are beautifully nuanced and entirely real, her prose is as streamlined and efficient as a galloping Thoroughbred and her quiet ending breaks your heart. A stakes winner. (Fiction. 8-14)