معرفی

Introduction

Nicholas Evans was born in Bromsgrove, England, in 1950. He studied law at Oxford University, and then he began writing for a newspaper in Newcastle. Later he changed jobs and went to work in television. He became a reporter in the United States and the Middle East and one of his jobs was to write about the war in Beirut. He also produced television programmes about the lives of important people. In 1985 Evans turned from fact to fiction. Since then he has written and produced films for television. He lives in South London with his wife and their two children.

The Horse Whisperer first became famous in 1995, a year before it was completed. The story was sold to Robert Redford and Hollywood Pictures for $3 million. Evans had the idea for the book when a friend told him about a man in Dartmoor, in the south of England. This man could calm a wild horse just by talking quietly to it. Tom Booker, in The Horse Whisperer, is a similar kind of man. He wins the trust of horses because he knows and loves them.

The story, though, does not take place in England. Tom Booker lives and works in the wide-open spaces of Montana in the United States. Evans wrote the book in England. But he spent time in Montana, New Mexico and Northern California making notes for it. This gives the book a strong sense of place.

Important storylines run through the book. Feelings between a mother and daughter change and grow. The mother has to choose between her work and her family, but she also has to understand her own real needs. It is a story of love and self discovery. Evans says: “It’s about people finding a way of life that is true to themselves and the world.”

Grace, who is thirteen years old, is the only child of Robert and Annie. Robert is a busy New York lawyer and Annie, an Englishwoman, works on a fashionable magazine. Their lives are changed for ever when Grace and her much-loved horse, Pilgrim, are both badly hurt in a riding accident. Annie wants to help her daughter to get better. She also wants to save the horse’s life. In Annie’s mind, the lives of her daughter and the horse are tied together in a way that she cannot explain, even to herself.

She hears of the special skills that Tom Booker has with horses. At first he says that he is unable to do anything for Pilgrim. But Annie does not accept this. She drives with her daughter and the sick horse all the way to Montana to make him change his mind.