Customer Reviews

Wish Riders

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This is a haunting tale with a very Young Adult sensibility. I picked it up because I was intrigued by the premise--a girl who is nearly a slave in a logging camp plants magical seeds that sprout into herbaceous horses, and then she and her friends escape on the horses. (To be specific, this is a fantastic incarnation of the folk expression, "If wishes were horses, beggars could ride," cited in the book.) The horses are one of my two favorite things about Wish Riders, the other being the main character. Edith ("Dusty") is a determined heroine with the kind of greatness of soul that allows her to overlook the pettiness of a selfish friend, simply seeing that friend's need for help. Actually, I should add that the portrayal of the Depression-era logging camp is also excellent--a fresh and strange setting, especially in the context of the fairy tale atmosphere the author creates. My hesitation regarding the book is that it's much less hopeful than I anticipated. The hope lies entirely within Edith, as the world around her is unrelentingly treacherous. A major theme of the book seems to be "You can't trust anyone but yourself--and possibly your dead mother." Wish Riders is particularly quick to denounce men as untrustworthy. Men in the book are inclined to threaten or attempt rape and even incest against the girl hero and her female friends; the best of the male characters simply proves to be unreliable. Again, this seems to be in keeping with today's trends in YA literature, but it is not for the faint of heart, and it is certainly not for intermediate readers, e.g., horse-crazy 10-year-olds. Wish Riders is clearly influenced by the Brothers Grimm, alluding to both Donkeyskin and to Cinderella (or Ashenputtel)--the version where a hazel tree planted over the mother's grave yields gifts administered by a white bird. As a Cinderella story, Wish Riders has a wonderful "pumpkin carriage," but there is no prince, no kindly fairy godmother, and no happy ending, simply a tribute to Cinderella's courageous heart.