Broken Horses

Patagonia, 1921. Racked with guilt after leaving her wounded fiancé in the aftermath of the Great War, Georgie Carruthers crosses the ocean to southern Patagonia to forget the past and to start a new life as the governess of a motherless boy with the Creeds, a wealthy estancia family frozen in colonial expectations and manners. Central to this straight-jacketed world is Raul, the horse breaker whose warmth, wisdom and integrity captures Georgie's heart, just as Mr Creed starts to think Georgie might make a useful second wife. The initial love triangle subverts narrative expectations and breaks into a world of desperate politics. This novel has everything - wind-swept plains, horses, rebellion and passion. A perfect, beautiful storm of a novel which brings together the wild backcloth of Patagonia in the 1920s, unrest and revolution amongst the workers, straight-jacketed colonialism, a poignant love story and horses broken and unbroken galloping across the wind-torn plains. Two poignant relationships steal our hearts - between the horse breaker and the governess, and between the horse breaker and his beloved Hero. Both epic and intimate, Kate Beale pulls off a tense, filmic narrative that will keep you hooked until the last page.