When the Horses Came

The Horse Catchers Trilogy #1

by Amanda Cockrell

The Trickster's gifts come with a price. A long time ago he gave a new animal to our ancestors, and changed the world... Out of Breath is barely a man when he first dreams of a powerful white animal- a shining giant that runs unseen through the desert as quickly and easi;y as water runs through his fingers. His people tell Out of Breath that visions are suspect, and in any case properly had by old men, not by young ones. But he is driven and relentless, and must leave to search the desert himself. When he returns, he is leading a beast who's like no one has ever seen before-a tall, bony creature who says its name is Horse. The people of Red Earth City are afraid of it-all except the beautiful, willful Wants the Moon, who first thinks of riding on its back. Together, Out of Breath and Wants the Moon will prove what the gift of Horse may mean to their people and to the Buffalo Hunters of the Grass. As yet, only Coyote the Trickster wishes that he could undo the danger that has ridden in unwanted and unseen on Horse's sleek back...The Trickster's gifts come with a price. A long time ago he gave a new animal to our ancestors, and changed the world...

Genres: Prehistoric, Historical Fiction

304 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

I grew up in Ojai, California, a wonderful place where you could ride your horse down Main Street and there was a hitching post outside the library. It was a bedroom town for Hollywood, full of writers and actors and directors, so there was always something going on, and famous people’s discarded trousers tended to end up in the local thrift shop. Ojai also had a branch office for every philosophical and religious movement to arrive in California since the 20s. I loved it and it became the template for Ayala, the setting for several of my books.

My father, Francis M. Cockrell, was a screenwriter, and my mother, Marian Cockrell, was a screenwriter and a novelist. I first began to write, badly, in high school, where I created characters that my high school English teacher, J. B. Close, of blessed memory, told me were shallow. He was, alas, right, and the rightness of his assessment was knocked into my head in creative writing workshops at Hollins College (now Hollins University) a school which had, and has, a wonderful writing program with the goal of teaching students to write like themselves, and not like the creative writing professor. (This is rarer than you would think.)

Since the only thing I actually do well is write, I have managed to make a living doing so in one form or another for most of my life. Besides my novels, I have written a lot of other things. I have written radio commercials for Custer’s Last Sandwich Stand, featuring the Singing Pickles. (“Oh, you must be a lover of your landlady’s daughter, or you don’t get a second piece of pie!”) I have written ads for panty girdles. I have written the text for a book of very bad paintings of California missions. I have written local history, book reviews, obituaries, wedding stories, and a paperback plantation saga under a name that will forevermore be secret. Also, I have received fiction fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

I have a master’s degree in English and creative writing from Hollins and am currently the managing editor of that university’s literary journal, The Hollins Critic, and director of its graduate program in children’s literature. I teach writing and children’s literature.

I live with my husband, Tony Neuron, and a substantial assortment of dogs and cats, in Roanoke, Virginia.

Amanda Cockrell also publishes under Damion Hunter.

Reviews

[Jim Vuksic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amanda Cockrell's writing style effectively captures the complex adjustment period of a Native American clan's transition from being severely limited in its ability to travel, hunt, and fight, to a horseback culture destined to rule the plains for nearly a century. I was mesmerized by the vividly portrayed interaction between the characters and the dramatic, yet totally believable, events described in a sympathetic, yet realistic manner.

[Kelli · Rating 2 out of 5]

The whole story just seemed too juvenile and was hard to read. She made the characters sound more idiotic than naive. I'm hoping she was trying for naive anyway. The whole thing just didn't sit well with me.