The Night Ride

Product Description
The Black Stallion meets Tamora Pierce in this adventure-filled middle grade novel about a young stable girl who discovers a secret that endangers her beloved horse and threatens her future.\nSonnia loves horses more than anything. She works at her family’s struggling pony ride business but dreams of the beautiful steeds in the royal stables, especially Ricochet, who she’s been slowly saving money to buy—even though she knows people from her impoverished neighborhood are rarely so lucky.\nThen Ricochet is moved to the racetrack across town, and Sonnia lands a job there. Now, she can see Ricochet every day and earn enough money to buy him in no time—all while helping her family with her new wages! She even joins the junior racing cadre to train to become a jockey. But then she uncovers their secret pastime: competing in the Night Ride, a dangerous and highly illegal race in the darkest hours before dawn. Every race puts the horses at risk.\nSonnia wants to protect the horses she’s grown to care for, but she’s only a kid from the poor side of town—considered expendable, just like the horses. If she just keeps her head down, soon she can buy Ricochet and get him out of there—and keep supporting her family. But would she be able to live with herself?
Review
"Sonnia is an engaging character with grit and determination. . . Engaging, true-to-life horse content will satisfy many." -- Kirkus Reviews\n"Sonnia adores working with the horses . . . but she’s horrified to discover that the other stablehands compete for large sums in a dangerous and illegal nighttime race” . . . Coats’s fast-paced tale [absorbs] with meticulously observed horsey details and a tender interspecies relationship." \n-- Publishers Weekly
About the Author
J. Anderson Coats has master’s degrees in history and library science and has published short stories in numerous literary magazines and anthologies. She is the author of the acclaimed novels
The Wicked and the Just,
The Many Reflections of Miss Jane Deming,
R Is for Rebel,
The Green Children of Woolpit, and
The Night Ride. She lives with her family in Washington State. Visit her at JAndersonCoats.com.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1\n1\nIT’S BEEN YEARS since I was small enough to ride Buttermilk, but she’s still the best pony in this whole town.\nButtermilk is who you lead out when a kid isn’t sure he wants a pony ride. She is round and soft with big, dark eyes under a shaggy white forelock, her back so broad it’s like a nice, sturdy chair. Her step is so even that kids forget they were scared and start pretending they’re rangers, or bandit hunters, or fleet riders.\nWhen the ride is over, kids hug her goodbye. Sometimes mothers have to drag them by the hand off the town common while they bawl and plead for another turn.\nHazy likes to kick up her heels. You put an adventurous kid on her back, or one who’s a little older, or who’s ridden before. Boris is strong enough to carry two kids at once and sweet enough to be willing to do it. I love all three of our ponies, but Buttermilk is the one that keeps bringing in kids.\nThis is why she’s the best pony in Mael Dunn. It’s definitely not her attitude. She breaks wind like a dockhand and enjoys nabbing hats off passersby. She’ll eat apples and candy sticks right out of the hands of children who aren’t paying attention to their treats.\nBut every time I put a kid on Hazy or Boris or Buttermilk and lead them in a well-trodden circle on the common, we earn a copper piece.\nMore kids mean more coppers, which means every pony ride puts me a little closer to making Ricochet my own.\nGreta and I are supposed to trade off every other day, one of us giving pony rides and the other going to school, but Father found out she was letting me have her turns on the common because she’d rather go to school and I’d rather be with the ponies. We both got in trouble, and there w