Thea Atwell loves horses and at 15 is already an expert rider, yet when she is sent to a riding school in North Carolina in the midst of the Depression, it is more a punishment than a reward in “The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls” by Anton Disclafani (2013).

She has grown up in happy isolation, a doctor's daughter, in rural Florida. She spends her days with her beloved horse, her twin brother, her parents and occasionally her cousin, Georgie, and his parents. She has been educated at home. What Thea did to warrant exile to a girls camp Disclafani keeps a secret for most of the novel, leaking out subtle clues here and there. The truth turns out to be even more shocking than what the reader may have imagined.

Yet what happens at the riding camp becomes more shocking still. as Thea, who narrates her own story, pursues the handsome headmaster while his wife is away trying to raise money for the school. This teenage girl, like most of the rest of us, behaves shamefully one minute and heroically the next. For all the tension in this novel, the tension the author maintains between good and bad may be her greatest achievement.

Disclafani makes the Depression a significant part of her story. The girls at the camp come from wealthy families, yet some of these families lose their wealth during this period, and Thea's family is also impacted and must move into a smaller home, one without horses. While at the camp, Thea only wants to go home, yet a year later, when she is exiled back to her parents, her home and the ideal life she once knew there no longer exist. ( )

Quite sad...but amazing that a man wrote this in the voice of a 16 year old girl. ( )

“I was a girl, I learned, who got what she wanted, but not without sadness, not without cutting a swath of destruction so wide it consumed my family. I almost fell into it, with them. I almost lost myself.”
― Anton DiSclafani, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

This book is about Thea Atwell who is sent away from her family as a result of a scandal that she was involved in. She winds up, of coarse at The Yonahlossee riding camp for girls. This is her story.

I really wanted to love this novel. I adore Historical fiction and I adore horses. Should have been a good read. But it wasn't.

Part of the issue for me, is that I could not stand Thea, the main character. Like so many other reviewers said, she was a tough one to like. I do not always have to like my characters to get into a story. But I just did not care for reading about her. And after awhile, I ran out of patience. I did read the whole book but it took awhile and I simply could not get over what a destructive force she was. And I pride myself on not judging. However in this case it was pretty impossible.

The horses did not feature as much as I thought they would. And there was a joylessness about the book that made it extremely difficult to enjoy.

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I also did not like how, at the end, Thea's fate was summed up in about a minute. I really could not get into this and the ending left me cold. At the end of the day, though it was well written, this just was not the right book for me. ( )

i wanted to like this one more than i did. it was still a good read, but it never quite captured me and sucked me in. interesting exploration on female desire and the change from girlhood towards something resembling womanhood in the 1930s though. i was constantly annoyed by too many of the characters, and never really connected with any of them. i did like thea in the end, but... not enough to really pull me in to her story the way i hoped. the author shows a lot of promise as her debut though, and i'll keep a lookout towards her future books. ( )

This book oozes foreboding and foreshadowing -- much like the languid heat of its partial FL setting or the fecund Appalachian mountains for its other location. Set in 1930 -- the heart of the Depression, the story is narrated by Thea who is just arriving at the Yonahlossee Riding Camp in the N. Carolina mountains. She has been "sent away" and the reason is hinted at, flashbacked and ultimately revealed -- essentially sexual impropriety though Thea is a progressive girl and has really not learned a lesson despite missing her home and her twin -- always a twin for ultimate sensitivity and maximum hurt. It is a well-written coming-of-age story, but a little morally ambivalent. ( )