Description
Alice Winston is twelve years old, and her world has turned upside down.
After her older sister elopes with a rodeo cowboy, Alice is left to bear the brunt of her family's troubles - her melancholy and bedridden mother, her reticent, overworked father, and their run-down horse ranch in Desert Valley, Colorado.
Facing the hottest summer in fifteen years, Alice and her father breed their horses, give riding lessons and, as the pile of bills stacks up, lower their heads and agree to board the pampered horses of their rich neighbours.
For Alice, it is a social education, bringing her into contact with a new breed of woman, and teaching her that for both horses and people, it is bloodlines that make all the difference.
As the dusty, stifling summer unfolds, Alice's family and their well-being become intertwined with the lives of their clients; her father pins his hopes on a gorgeous but unbreakable horse and Alice, left too much to her own devices and obsessed with a girl who drowned in the canal, begins a dangerous friendship.
Drawn into an adult world of secrets, hard truths and even harder consequences, she experiences her first kiss, her first beer and her first infatuation.
But when the rain comes and brings the summer to an end, Alice's choices lead to a devastating betrayal and a shocking, violent series of events.
