The Horse Whisperer [Paperback]

Nicholas Evans (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 1, 1996

A forty-ton truck hurtles out of control on a snowy country road, a teenage girl on horseback in its path.  In a few terrible seconds the life of a family is shattered.  And a mother's quest begins -- to save her maimed daughter and a horse driven mad by pain.  It is an odyssey that will bring her to...

The Horse Whisperer

He is the stuff of legend.  His voice can calm wild horses and his touch heal broken spirits.  For secrets uttered softly into pricked and troubled ears, such men were once called Whisperers.  Now Tom Booker, the inheritor of this ancient gift, is to meet his greatest challenge.

Annie Graves has traveled across a continent with her daughter, Grace, and their wounded horse, Pilgrim, to the Booker ranch in Montana.  Annie has risked everything -- her career, her marriage, her comfortable life--in her desperate belief that the Whisperer can help them.  The accident has turned Pilgrim savage.  He is now so demented and dangerous that everyone says he should be destroyed.  But Annie won't give up on him, for she feels his fate is inextricably entwined with that of her daughter, who has retreated into a heartrending, hostile silence.  Annie knows that if the horse dies, something in Grace will die too.

In the weeks to come, under the massive sky of the Rocky Mountain Front, all their lives--including Tom Booker's--will be transformed forever in a way none could have foretold.  At once an epic love story and a gripping adventure, The Horse Whisperer weaves an extraordinary tale of healing and redemption--a magnificent emotional journey that explores our ancient bonds with earth and sky and hearts untamed.  It is a stirring elegy to the power of belief and self-discovery, to hopes lost and found again.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Horse Whisperer is a story made in Hollywood heaven. The novel was written by a first-time author, and the film option was snapped up by aging heartthrob Robert Redford for 3 million smackers. Why take such risks on a brand-spanking-new author? The answer becomes clear upon reading the touching tale.

One morning while teenage Grace Maclean is riding Pilgrim, her goofy, loveable pony, she has a horrendous glass-shattering, bone-splintering, ligament-lynching meeting with a megaton truck that leaves her and her four-legged friend damaged in mind, body, and spirit. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, her jaded, brilliant, bitchy mom, Annie Graves (Kristin Scott Thomas in the 1998 film) is working out a wrinkle in her self-absorbed existence when she gets a call at her plush, Manhattan office about Grace's accident. Racked with guilt, Graves makes it her calling to find the mythical horse whisperer, an equine Zen master who has the ability to heal horses (and broken souls) with soothing words and a gentle touch. Just when it seems he can't be found, what do you know, she finds him. He arrives in the form of Tom Booker-- a rugged, sensitive, dreamy cowboy who helps Pilgrim and Grace repair their fractured selves. To add more mesquite to fire, Booker has a way with not-so-injured, attractive, married women--like Annie. As the plot thickens, so does the familial strife, which threatens to undo Booker's healing work.

Like an expert cinematographer, Evans deftly crafts each scene with precision and clarity, sprinkling in ominous signs and foreboding images. For example, in the opening paragraphs, as Annie starts out on the tragic ride, she comes across a bloody bird wing that seems to have fallen out of nowhere. The weight of impending doom is further strengthened by the truck driver's bad luck--he has a run-in with the highway patrol just moments before his meeting with Grace and Pilgrim. These not-so-subtle subliminal messages are masterfully stitched in throughout the story and may compel readers to act as if they were watching a B-grade horror movie, shouting aloud, "Don't go there!" However sentimental, The Horse Whisperer is an engaging read, sort of like a finely tuned, well-edited film. --Rebekah Warren --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Screenwriter Evans's debut novel spent 38 weeks on PW's bestseller list.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Dell (October 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440222656
• ISBN-13: 978-0440222651
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (674 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #761,733 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Nicholas Evans studied law at Oxford University after serving in Africa with Voluntary Service Overseas. He then worked as a newspaper reporter, TV producer, and screenwriter before writing four bestselling novels. His first book, The Horse Whisperer was made into a movie directed by Robert Redford. He lives in Devon with his wife, singer/songwriter Charlotte Gordon Cumming.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The movie only hinted at doing justice to this story. November 16, 2000

By LMB

Format:Hardcover

Unlike some other reviewers I wasn't expecting this book to be a great work of modern literature but rather a beautiful story that everyman could relate to with a bit of thought. I wasn't disappointed. Maybe the author was a screenwriter and maybe the sentimental story itself is set out to read like a movie plot unfolding, none of that, to my way of thinking, diminished the simple zen beauty of the authors prose which reflected the search for an inner calm in each of the main characters.

Others here have commented on the gore and adrenalin surging accident of Grace and the conveniently named Pilgrim and I from similar experiences found it traumatic - for the horse, but not for Grace herself because her story is really the means by which she and her mother find grace. Her mother Annie is forced to take stock of a life that she fears is not satisfying and which casts an effect on her child and her marriage.

If Tom, in a typical display of the western horseman, seems wooden through a lack of dialogue it is because he relates to the world through the horses he works with, espousing the simple wisdoms of a man who has learned to read what is subtle and unspoken. His loneliness is echoed in the souls of Pilgrim, Grace and Annie.

That Annie and Tom predictably fall in love and betray her marriage vows, in a different rendition of Graces relationship with Pilgrim, is not an issue. It is that only through the catalyst for change in Tom and the nature of his work with Pilgrim we find the key to the characters, that they too must sacrifice the instinct for self preservation to be remade with maturity.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Characterization weak and inconsistent February 19, 2007

By Hannah Fowler

Format:Paperback

I was drawn to the story because the horse and the family needed healing on many levels. I wanted to know more about how the horse and teenager were rehabilitated. Tom Booker, a.k.a. the Horse Whisperer, was an appealing character because he was a very balanced person. It was his role to be the healer. He had his wounds, but used them intuitively to help others. The author portrayed him as a spiritual sort of guy. Suddenly, we are led to believe that he has an epiphany: He needs Annie! Unfortunately, their mutual desire was portrayed on a superficial level. Tom kept remembering her eyes, her smile, etc. This was teenage crush material; not at all in keeping with his stature or implied integrety. Furthermore, without giving the ending of the book away, Tom's final decision was totally unbelievable to me, considering the fact that he'd earned the teenage girl's trust. Just what she needed, more fodder for Post-Traumatic Stress disorder!

The book begins in a promising way, especially when Tom comes on the scene. However, the ending just didn't live up to my expectations. I skipped the sex scenes and think the main characters would have been a little better off if they had, too!

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Where's the horse? May 9, 2001

By "cstew"

Format:Paperback

After all the hype I thought this book would be a profound insight into the relationships between people and animals and other people. How disappointed I was when I got almost all the way through and discovered it was little more than a romance novel! Heaving bosoms and all...

I suppose without any hype I might call it an impressive first novel, but I found most of the relationships stereotypical and the ending totally inconsistent with what little character development there was.