In the Presence of Horses

A woman unsettled by early loss--her parents, a sister, a beloved aunt and riding teacher--seeks solace in the unswerving loyalty of horses in a first novel more reminiscent of the stage play Equus than the recent books The Man Who Listens to Horses and The Horse Whisperer. Natalie Baxter, nearly 40 when the story begins, has spent her adult life fixated on horses, drifting from farm to farm until she finds herself perilously close to her hometown of Bethlehem, Pa., and in the employ of horse owner Pierce Kreitzer. He is as loss-scarred as she is and even less able to surface from a quagmire of self-pity. Dimmick provides a fine look at Leheigh Valley, the working-class, Moravian-influenced towns that depended for so long on steel mills and subsidiary industries and paid a heavy price in accidental and chemically caused deaths. Natalie has felt cut off from her roots ever since she left the valley, impelled to escape memories of a complicated childhood. Now she is drawn to a hobbled black horse named Twister that had belonged to Pierce's dead sister. She establishes an almost mystical relationship with the horse, but when she thinks ""He has the mind of God,"" readers may not quite share the spiritual bond. And since Twister has a degenerative disease, another loss is inevitable for Natalie. Natalie herself is sometimes all insight, sometimes blind. Yet Dimmick will keep readers intrigued as she injects suspenseful incidents into the narrative (the pistol in the first act is indeed fired in the last scene). Natalie's coming to terms with her life, and her jolting ride toward redemption turn out to be absorbing. Author tour. (Sept.)