I knew I would probably enjoy The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle because it’s about a girl growing up in a small town in Colorado — this girl did the same.

Alice Winston lives on a horse ranch in the desert with her father and reclusive mother, while her older sister Nona has run off with a cowboy riding the rodeo circuit.  With her sister gone, Alice’s father struggles to make the ranch profitable by boarding the horses of the wealthier women in town.  It’s a lot of work for just the two of them, and somehow they make do for awhile.  But all of them miss Nona and can’t understand why she’d leave the family and the ranch.

Meanwhile, Alice is dealing with being accepted at school and recovering from the death of a classmate.  She experiences her first kiss and her first crush.  She tries to make sense of the adults around her.  I sympathized with Alice and winced at the all too familiar pains of growing up.  I rooted for things to go her way.  Sadly, however, life doesn’t always turn out the way we plan.  Sometimes we just have to accept the way things are.

The God of Animals was Aryn Kyle’s first book.

2008 Spur (Best Western Long Novel)
2007, 320 pp.