White Horses

Book excerpt: A story about the fairy-tale fantasies of girlhood and the realities of growing up by “one of our quirkiest and most interesting novelists” (Jane Smiley, USA Today). When Teresa sleeps—sometimes for days at a time, the scent of roses surrounding her—she dreams of the Arias, outlaw riders on white steeds, who roam the desert at night. She was told about the dark-eyed horsemen by her mother, Dina, who left her own bedroom window open at night in the hopes that one would take her away from her parents’ house in Santa Fe. Teresa, who cannot find a cure for her mysterious sleeping sickness, has one true ally: her brother, Silver. Wild and handsome, Silver exerts an irresistible force over everyone he meets—women especially. He pursues a life of crime and danger, and the older he grows, the more reckless he becomes. Teresa wants to break free but is drawn back to her brother again and again, pulled by the belief that he is the night rider of her dreams. Only when she realizes that she has the strength to save herself will she finally be able to open her eyes and walk away. A lyrical blend of the mythical and the real, White Horses has been hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as a book that “will reverberate in readers’ imaginations for a long time.”