REVIEW OF ANNE MONTGOMERY'S 'WILD HORSES ON THE SALT'

 

Today, December 22, 2020, is the second anniversary of the death of my kid sister, Susan. A lover of animals, she always dreamed of owning a horse ranch. She never realized that dream. Oh, how she would have loved to live among the wild horses of America’s southwest. An avid reader, Susan would have enjoyed Anne Montgomery’s, “Wild Horses on the Salt.” I thought about my sister throughout my reading of the novel, and dedicate my review of it to her.

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In Anne Montgomery’s novel, “Wild Horses on the Salt,” Becca’s father knocks her mother around. And true to the bewildering, seemingly hereditary disposition of abuse, grownup Becca’s husband knocks her around. Fearing for her life, Becca runs—she runs from New Jersey to Arizona, to Gaby’s remote and idyllic spread lying along the Salt River in the low desert on the fringe of the Tonto National Forest a half hour northeast of Phoenix.         

A place to hide is Becca’s motivation. She is too beaten down to covet recovery or a better life, no less, happiness. Little does she know that Gaby’s is a place of magic—oh, not of the Cinderella type of magic, but of the healing type found in the spirit of land and sky and flora and fauna and truly righteous people. While the issue of spousal abuse is an undercurrent of Montgomery’s story, ultimately it is so much more—it is a smorgasbord of relationships, of the animal, plant, and insect kind, each one providing a life lesson for Becca and friends, as well as for the reader.   

 A most endearing and surprising liaison plays out between the skunk and Red, the resident orange cat. Buddies since birth, Red is complicit in skunk’s nightly raids on the beehives, an infuriating and objectively incurable situation—incurable until Becca and her mates are gifted with an attitude-altering epiphany. Sharing center stage with Becca in Montgomery’s story are the wild horses that roam free in the area, the spotlight focused on a magnificent stallion. He is the leader of a small band of mares. Gravely injured by a speeding car while crossing a highway, the stallion is rescued, corralled, and rehabilitated by caring people. During his time of captivity, the mares go missing. Crazed by the separation from his mares, the horse breaks free and a priceless treatise on his finding his way back to his home turf and mares warms ones heart, especially since his companion on his journey is a little lost sheep. Montgomery writes: “The horse lay in the shelter of a rocky ledge. The sheep, curled next to him, rested against his back. Though the storm, with its pelting rain and blowing wind, had frightened the little animal initially, the steady breathing of the horse and the warmth of his body had calmed her.

 “Later, the horse and the sheep came upon a herd of cows grazing placidly along a wire-fence, near a large, brown-and-white sign bearing the words Bureau of Land Management which boasted several jagged bullet holes. The cows paid no attention when the horse and the sheep approached to graze beside them. The spot, which bordered a two-lane road, dipped below the edge of the tarmac and was often rich with tender grasses, the result of runoff. Even before the storm, the area had been popular with this herd of milk cows and calves. Now free from the storm’s treacherous winds, animals and insects emerged from their hiding spots. Birds darted among the black-and white cows, snapping up bugs. A bird with snowy feathers, golden eyes, and a matching beak perched between the shoulder blades of an old cow. The bright white cattle egret was rare in the Sonoran Desert. In fact, the bird that had migrated from Africa to South America in the late nineteenth century had not been seen anywhere in North America until the early 1950s. When cattle egrets did appear in the desert, it was sometimes around irrigated fields or places where grasshoppers and crickets might pop into the air to avoid rising water. The bird was also drawn to the cows because the bovines stirred up insects while grazing in dry fields. But the relationship between the bird and the cow was not one-sided. The egret would tend the animal’s hide while it searched for parasites, plucking the itchy creatures from the cow’s skin and gulping them down.”

The world of nature outside the arrogant human eye is judged chaotic, but on closer look and the vision cleared, the veil of prejudice is lifted and we see that the disorder in fact exists within us. What human being wouldn’t find healing in such creature company as illustrated by Montgomery in this novel? I rate this glorious relationship story with 5 stars, and recommend it as a good choice of reading material during this high holiday season, and as a welcome distraction from the trials of Covid-19.© -Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

 

Purchase Link for “Wild Horses on the Salt” -  https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Horses-Salt-Anne-Montgomery-ebook/dp/B085ZX1WCZ/

 

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