And the pharmaceutical industry, particularly producers of women’s hormones, make their money at the dreadful expense of equine lives. The worn out, the used up, those who never measure up, all sold for slaughter. For every champion, tens of thousands die, often before they take ten breaths. I learned a good deal about the dark side of the horse racing industry. It is a feel-good story of spirit and triumph, but it contains some disturbing undertones. There, where their stories merge, where love and trust are allowed to grow, healing is found for girl, for man, and for beast. To escape, Hannah volunteers at a nearby stable that rehabilitates abused horses. Hannah’s mother died of cancer five years ago, and her father returns from Iraq minus a leg and exhibiting some terrifying effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I’m afraid my review may grow rather controversial before I’m done. The Outside of a Horse is an emotional, eye-opening novel that has pushed me into some new areas of thinking. “There’s nothing so good for the inside of a man as the outside of a horse.” Her most recent novel, Like Dust, I Rise, is a Coming of Age novel set in Texas during the Dust Bowl. Ginny is a past director of the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference.

Ginny is the author 6 novels for Middle Grade and Young Adults readers: Freeing Finch, How to Speak Dolphin, Lost in the River of Grass, winner of the 2012 / 2013 Sunshine State Young Readers Award Hurt Go Happy, winner of the 2008 American Library Association’s Schneider Family Book Award. She now lives on the chilly coast of northern California.

Her goal, after wrapping up her flying career and her graduate studies, was to move someplace where she would never be hot again. She went on to receive an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University. Midway through that career, she enrolled in the University of Miami to pursue an undergraduate degree in biology, graduated and changed direction again. Ginny Rorby was raised in Winter Park, Florida, and lived in Miami during her career as a Pan American flight attendant.

Freeing Finch by Ginny Rorby