Wish Riders Book

Fifteen-year-old Dusty, a ward of the state, is forced to work in a logging camp during the Depression.  Despite the bleakness of her life, spirited Dusty dreams of escape.

One day, a mysterious seagull delivers some unusual seeds to Dusty. Her whole life changes when she plants them. Perhaps it is the strength of her wishes, or the magic of the forest, but some unknown power transforms the tiny seeds into an astonishing creature-and a possible means of deliverance. Now Dusty and her friends have a way to navigate the enchanted, though dangerous, forest, and escape the wretched existence they've been trapped in all their lives.

Richly layered with fairy-tale lore and steeped in both the familiar and the darker elements of the Cinderella story, Patrick Jennings's inspired novel weaves a compelling tale about finding freedom, and finding oneself.

VOYA

At fifteen years of age, Edith (Dusty) Kelly is forced to work in a Depression-era logging camp as one of several foster children exploited for free labor by the money-grubbing Smith family. Mr. Smith, the philandering camp superintendent, is often gone while his bitter wife runs the camp, relying on its isolated location to keep her ill-treated charges from running away. When Dusty plants magical seeds, botanical horses spring up and carry her and four friends toward their hopes for a better life. They are an odd assortment: Sonny and Jed, hoping to reunite with their father; Hero, pregnant with Mr. Smith's child; Perdie, looking for her mother in an insane asylum; and Dusty, whose mother is dead and whose sailor father abandoned her after attempting sexual abuse. Deep in the woods, the runaways are temporary guests of Hodag, a magical, mysterious old woman who teaches them about Nature. When their plant horses begin to die, the teens discover that they are to be prisoners once more and escape on their expiring steeds. Eventually the five companions must split up. The boys head to their father's farm, and the girls to the coastal city where Perdie will look for her mother, Hero will search for a husband, and Dusty will look for her father. When the three girls find Dusty's father, still aboard his ship but blinded and remarried, the story comes full circle, although many issues remain unresolved. A blend of magical realism, fairy tale, and ecoliterature, Jennings's story is moving and engaging but makes unexpected jumps in genre at times. Harsh and soft aspects of the story sometimes seem incongruous with each other.