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Title: Falling from Horses

Author: Molly Gloss

Narrator: David Aaron Baker

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-28-14

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 22 votes

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

In 1938, 19-year-old cowboy Bud Frazer sets his sights on becoming a stunt rider in the movies. Fantasizing about rubbing shoulders with the great screen cowboys of his youth, he leaves his home in Echol Creek, Oregon, and heads for Hollywood. On the long bus ride south, Bud meets a young woman who also harbors dreams of making it in the movies, though not as a starlet but as a writer, a real writer. Lily Shaw is bold and outspoken and confident in ways completely out of proportion with her small frame and bookish looks. The two proceed to strike up an unlikely kinship that will carry them through their tumultuous days in Hollywood - and, as it happens, for the rest of their lives. Acutely observed and impeccably authentic, Falling From Horses charts what turns out to be a glittering year in the movie business, seen through the wide eyes and lofty dreams of two people trying to make their mark on the world, or at least to make their way in it. As she did so memorably in her previous novel, the best-selling The Hearts of Horses, Molly Gloss weaves a remarkable tale of humans and horses, hope and heartbreak. Molly Gloss is also the author of The Jump-Off Creek, a winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and the Oregon Book Award, The Dazzle of Day, a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the PEN Center West Fiction Prize, and Wild Life, winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award.

Members Reviews:

I thoroughly enjoyed this nostalgic journey back to 1930s Hollywood

I thoroughly enjoyed this nostalgic journey back to 1930s Hollywood, especially the opportunity to take an inside look at how the early B Westerns were made. The focus is on the stunt men who fell from horses, jumped from wagons, and charged pell mell over open fields with trip wires that more often than not crippled the horses and ended their lives. Like other young fans of these early westerns, I was not mindful at the time of the risks these stunt men were exposed to nor was I sensitive to the callous treatment of the horses, at a time when both human and animal lives seemed to have minimal value for the movie makers of the era. As for the characters, nineteen-year-old Bud, the narrator who leaves his parents and their hardscrabble ranch life in eastern Oregon, for the adventure of 'falling off horses' in front of the movie cameras, is admirable for his grit and guts as well as his deepening sensitivity to and ultimately his rejection of the brutal way of life that the stunt men--and their horses--endured and accepted. Bud befriends a budding screenwriter on the bus also on her way to Hollywood. Her single-mindedness, ambition and indifference to romance diffuse any possibility of Bud becoming involved with her. She seems more interested in Bud and his daily experiences making movies than in developing any kind of lasting attachment to the young horseman. The story's magic is found in Bud's account of his sister and her tragic fate with a horse, a fate that is eerily similar to what happens to Bud on his last day working as a stunt man in Hollywood.

Read if you love horses, cowboys and honesty

Be prepared. This one is hard to read in spots but well worth the effort. Well rounded characters, lively action and an in-depth understanding of the problems facing a young man from the wilds of Oregon in Hollywood for the first time.