Night Ride Home

by Barbara Esstman

Book Overview

On the farmland along the Missouri River in the years after WWII, Nora Mahler led a good life boarding horses on her family's ranch. Her son, Simon, and daughter, Clea, inherited from her a love for... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151002886
• ISBN13: 9780151002887
• Release Date: September 1997
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

wonderful story and you don't have to love horses

I read this one several years ago and read it again recently. It's very good. Not all choppy or slurply. Simply a pleasure to read.

A true to life romance

I felt that this book was beautifully written, and says a lot about human nature. I think that this book would appeal more to a female audience because of the focus on a woman who has to deal with the death of a child and the realization of the fact that her marriage is falling apart. I like that fact that each chapter is told from a different character's point-of-view giving you insight into each of them. I also liked the fact that it was a romance novel but not a sappy one. This was true to life and easy to relate to making the novel more appealing to an audience. I personally would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys romance and happy endings.

Don't watch the movie.

I loved this book and was very disappointed in the Hallmark presentation. They took a book about a verbally abused woman who, after a tragedy, gets a second chance to fulfill herself and changed it into a movie about a man finally becoming the head of his household. They totally turned it around and made the husband into the good guy and the wife a selfish, self-centered person. The husband doesn't shoot the horse but the wife almost does!! This was not the book I read. I wish they had just used some other book and not ruined one with a totally different message and story.

The loss of a son dramatically changed a family.

The story of grief and the rediscovery of hope and genuine love takes place on a horse ranch in the Missouri flood plains. You can see the winds, smell the barn and feel the horses' manes during four seasons. You see the story from each of the major characters' viewpoint while their lives are completely transformed. The book is passionant, honest and beautifully written. If you want to understand what women want, this will explain it all.

Finally a romance that doesn't insult your intelligence.

I met a romance writer at a writer's conference a few years ago. She told me that I was missing out on some wondering writing because I assumed that all romances belonged on the shelf labeled "trash." I decided to be more open-minded and take a field trip to the book store's Romance section. Sorry to say, what I saw there didn't change my mind: cliches for character, wooden writing and predictable plots. Consequently, when I hear the word "romance" used to describe a book, I run the other way. But now there's a reason not to run. Because we graduated from the same Writing Program and have stayed in touch, I had the good fortune to receive an advance copy of Barbara Esstman's Night Ride Home. I cringed when I read Harcourt Brace's blurb about a "man and a woman who wage the fight of their lives for a second chance at love." Sounds like the stuff of melodramatic romance, doesn't it? But it's not. Night Ride Home is an intelligent, perceptive look at how people must redefine themselves in the aftermath of tradegy. The writing is lyrical. The characters feel like flesh-and-blood and the story is both complex and compelling. Read it.