Book Review: Blaze of Glory

Virtualbookworm.com Publishing, June 2011

Tea (pronounced Tay-a) Everson and her twin brother live with their stepfather, Declan Foster, on his horse ranch in Ontario, where he operates a boarding stable and riding school. Tea is sixteen, an ambitious show jumper, and she and her horse, Blaze of Glory, have qualified for the Royals.

Then their cousin, or rather, Dec’s nephew, Jadan Foster, a professional polo player, comes back for a visit after having been away for years. He’s handsome, charming, six years older than the twins, and part of the much more prosperous part of the family. It’s the start of a difficult, challenging year for Tea, Jadan, Declan, and everyone around them.

Declan loves his two adopted children, but saying he’s a strict disciplinarian is an understatement. When pushed far enough, he reaches for his belt as a disciplinary tool, and Tea and her brother have learned to live with this. He’s determined to keep them safe, and Tea’s jumping worries him. He tolerates her jumping Blaze and other familiar horses, but has strict rules about exactly what she can do, the size of jumps she can take without the trainer present, etc.

Tea, who is a truly gifted jumper and horse handler, finds this stifling, and at sixteen, patience and demonstrating responsibility in order to win more freedom to use her own judgment is not her strong point. Believing that Dec can’t afford to pay the whole cost of her going to the Royals because of business conditions this year, she decides to earn her own money with a temporary job—exercising horses at the nearby racetrack. The problem with this is that Dec has forbidden the twins to go anywhere near the track, because it’s a rough environment that he feels is not safe for them. When Tea does it anyway, while Dec is away on his other business, Jadan stops by the track and sees her. He says he won’t tell Dec if she quits, but she won’t do that, and he does tell Dec.

Dec beats her with his belt, and also grounds her for just two weeks—the two weeks of the Royals.

Jadan is shocked at the beating. Tea is really devastated by the loss of the chance to go to the Royals. When this is followed shortly after by an accident that kills Blaze, they’re all in for a tough year.

Tea needs to work through her grief over Blaze’s death, and also the crushed dream of a show jumping career, which requires not just riding ability but the right horse. Jadan is working through guilt at being the cause of Tea’s beating. And Dec, we gradually learn, decides it’s time to do something about his own resort to violence when defied.

The dynamics of this family are complicated and interesting. Tea’s mother married Dec when the twins were ten—and died when they were fourteen. Dec is the only family they have, and two years after their mother’s death, they worry about what will happen if Dec decides he no longer wants these two children who aren’t his. Jadan’s parents are divorced, and his father is more violent and abusive than Dec—something they apparently got from their own father. At one point, Dec had offered to take in Jadan, and if that had happened, he and twins would have grown up as siblings.

But that didn’t happen, and instead they’re almost-cousins who haven’t met in years and are just getting acquainted. Tea looks at him and sees an attractive young man, a horseman like herself, who isn’t all that many years older than she is. Jadan is a lot more aware of the age difference, and how the relationship might look questionable to others.

Tea is grieving Blaze, and is haunted by what she hasn’t told her family about the accident. Without a horse of her own, she’s riding and working with the school horses, some of the boarders, and occasionally riding “difficult” horses for others. Dec, concerned for her safety, is almost over-protective, trying to limit her risk to almost nothing. Tea, though, is maturing into a very skilled and even gifted rider and trainer, and needs to challenge herself.

The relationships among Tea, Dec, and Jadan, strained by the conflicts and bound together by their love of horses as well as each other, make a compelling and emotionally satisfying story.

Recommended.

Reviewer Bio:
Lis and Addy

Lis Carey is a librarian with an odd sense of humor, who finds excitement in helping people find the information they need, and in the varied corners of library work–reference, cataloging, circulation, resource development, reader’s advisory. She reads voraciously and enjoys a wide variety of material–including, of course, fiction and non-fiction about dogs and cats. Addy, her Chinese Crested, is always happy to keep her company while reading, and occasionally tries to help write the reviews.

Check out her Blog Lis Carey’s Library for more Book Reviews.