![]() First edition cover | |
Author | Nicholas Evans |
---|---|
Language | English |
Publisher | Delacorte Press |
Publication date | 1995 |
Media type | Print (hardback and paperback) and audio CD |
Pages | 678 pp (first edition, hardcover) |
ISBN | 978-0-385-31523-4 (first edition, hardcover) |
The Horse Whisperer is a 1995 novel by English author Nicholas Evans. The book was his debut novel, and gained significant success, becoming the 10th-best selling novel in the United States in 1995, selling over 15 million copies. This also makes it one of the best-selling books of all time. [1] In 2003 the novel appeared at number 195 on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's "best-loved novels". [2]
The book was made into a film, also titled The Horse Whisperer , directed by and starring Robert Redford.
The novel starts in upstate New York where a teenage girl, Grace Maclean, and her friend, Judith, go riding on their horses, Pilgrim and Gulliver, on a snowy morning. As they ride up an icy slope, Gulliver slips and hits Pilgrim. Both horses fall, dragging the girls into a road and into a collision with a tractor-trailer. Judith and Gulliver are killed, while Grace and Pilgrim are severely injured. Grace, left with a partially amputated right leg, is bitter and withdrawn. Grace's mother, Annie, is a workaholic magazine editor, and her father, Robert, is a lawyer. The different approaches taken by each of Grace's parents in dealing with the accident strain relationships within the family.
Following the accident, Pilgrim is traumatised and uncontrollable, leading his caretakers to mistreat him and to suggest that he be put down. Annie refuses to allow her horse to be put down and hears of a 'horse whisperer', Tom Booker. She undertakes a long cross country journey with Pilgrim and Grace to Montana.
On the Montana ranch, Tom works with Pilgrim and starts to make progress. Both Grace and Annie become happier because the ranch life suits them. During the stay, Annie and Tom become close and eventually begin an affair.
Despite the progress that Tom has made with Pilgrim, Grace is still unable to ride the horse. Tom attempts a drastic intervention by forcing the horse to lie down and having Grace stand on him. This technique works and horse and rider are reunited.
At the party marking the end of Grace's and Annie's stay in Montana, Grace finds out about the affair, and she rides recklessly into the countryside. Grace unintentionally rides into a herd of wild mustangs that begin a stampede. Tom rides after her and finds Pilgrim fighting with the mustang stallion. Tom manages to save Grace and Pilgrim, but then deliberately gets himself fatally trampled by the stallion, perhaps because he feels guilty about hurting Grace by having an affair with her mother.
Grace, Annie, and Pilgrim return to New York to rebuild their lives with Robert, but Annie discovers she is pregnant and eventually gives birth to a baby with Tom's blue eyes.
According to writer Nicholas Evans, [3] Tom Booker is modelled after horse whisperers Tom Dorrance, Ray Hunt and, in particular, their younger disciple Buck Brannaman. Evans has said, "Others have claimed to be the inspiration for Tom Booker in The Horse Whisperer. The one who truly inspired me was Buck Brannaman. His skill, understanding and his gentle, loving heart have parted the clouds for countless troubled creatures. Buck is the Zen master of the horse world." [4]
Robert Redford bought the film rights for £3 million, [5] and the film The Horse Whisperer was released in 1998, with Redford himself in the title role as Tom Booker and Scarlett Johansson as Grace MacLean.
The film is mostly faithful to the book but does not include Grace's confrontation with the herd of Mustangs, or the death of Booker. Instead, Annie drives away from the ranch with Pilgrim in the trailer while Booker watches from the top of a hill. There is no indication in the movie that Annie and Tom sexually consummated their affair.
Robert LeRoy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy, was an American train and bank robber and the leader of a gang of criminal outlaws known as the "Wild Bunch" in the Old West.
Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, better known as the Sundance Kid, was an outlaw and member of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch in the American Old West. He likely met Butch Cassidy during a hunting trip in 1883 or earlier. The "Wild Bunch" gang performed the longest string of successful train and bank robberies in American history. Longabaugh fled the United States along with his consort Etta Place and Butch Cassidy to escape the dogged pursuit of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The trio fled first to Argentina and then to Bolivia, where most historians believe Parker (Cassidy) and Longabaugh were killed in a shootout in November 1908.
A River Runs Through It and Other Stories is a semi-autobiographical collection of three stories by American author Norman Maclean (1902–1990) published in 1976. It was the first work of fiction published by the University of Chicago Press.
The Horse Whisperer is a 1998 American Western drama film directed by and starring Robert Redford, based on the 1995 novel The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans. Redford plays the title role, a talented trainer with a remarkable gift for understanding horses, who is hired to help an injured teenager and her horse back to health following a tragic accident.
Natural horsemanship is a collective term for a variety of horse training techniques which have seen rapid growth in popularity since the 1980s. The techniques vary in their precise tenets but generally share principles of "a kinder and gentler cowboy" to develop a rapport with horses, using methods said to be derived from observation of the natural behavior of free-roaming horses and rejecting abusive training methods.
Nicholas Benbow Evans was a British journalist, screenwriter, television and film producer and novelist.
Western lifestyle or cowboy culture is the lifestyle, or behaviorisms, of, and resulting from the influence of, the attitudes, ethics and history of the American Western cowboy. In the present day these influences affect this sector of the population's choice of recreation, clothing, and consumption of goods.
Flicka is a 2006 American family adventure drama film loosely based on the 1941 children's novel My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara. The film is directed by Michael Mayer and written by Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner. The novel had previously been made into a film by 20th Century Fox in 1943, and served as the inspiration for My Friend Flicka, a 39-episode TV series in 1956–1957. In this version, set in the 21st century, the protagonist is a girl, played by Alison Lohman. The film also features Maria Bello, Ryan Kwanten and country singer Tim McGraw, who also served as executive producer of the soundtrack album. This USD15 million-budgeted film grossed $21 million in the United States theaters, and then it went on to become a surprise hit in DVD market in the United States; it made more than $48 million on DVD sales and more than $19 million on DVD/Home Video rental.
A River Runs Through It is a 1992 American drama film directed by Robert Redford and starring Craig Sheffer, Brad Pitt, Tom Skerritt, Brenda Blethyn, and Emily Lloyd. It is based on the 1976 semi-autobiographical novella A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean, adapted for the screen by Richard Friedenberg. Set in and around Missoula, Montana, the story follows two sons of a Presbyterian minister, one studious and the other rebellious, as they grow up and come of age in the Rocky Mountain region during a span of time from roughly World War I to the early days of the Great Depression, including part of the Prohibition era.
Dan M. "Buck" Brannaman is an American horse trainer and a leading clinician with a philosophy of handling horses based on classical concepts from the vaquero tradition; working with the horse's nature, using an understanding of how horses think and communicate to train the horse to accept humans and work confidently and responsively with them.
Jonathan Lipe Foote, is an American architect whose work is associated with the preservation movement in the U.S. He is the founder of Jonathan L. Foote and Associates, Inc., an architecture firm based in Livingston, Montana.
Born to the West is a 1937 American Western film starring John Wayne, Marsha Hunt, and John Mack Brown. Filmed in black and white and based upon a Zane Grey novel, the movie incorporates footage from an earlier and higher budgeted silent version, a common practice of the era. The picture features fast chases, gun-fights, unusual poker gambling, and peppy light dialogue for the love interest.
Bertha Muzzy Sinclair or Sinclair-Cowan, néeMuzzy, best known by her pseudonym B. M. Bower, was an American author who wrote novels, fictional short stories, and screenplays about the American Old West. Her works, featuring cowboys and cows of the Flying U Ranch in Montana, reflected "an interest in ranch life, the use of working cowboys as main characters, the occasional appearance of eastern types for the sake of contrast, a sense of western geography as simultaneously harsh and grand, and a good deal of factual attention to such matters as cattle branding and bronc busting." She was married three times: to Clayton Bower in 1890, to Bertrand William Sinclair in 1905, and to Robert Elsworth Cowan in 1921. However, she chose to publish under the name Bower.
Branded is a 1950 American Technicolor Western film starring Alan Ladd, Mona Freeman, Charles Bickford, and Robert Keith. It was adapted from the novel Montana Rides by Max Brand under pen name Evan Evans. A gunfighter on the run from the law is talked into posing as the long-lost son of a wealthy rancher.
The phrase Wonder Horses refers to the equine companions of cowboy heroes in early Western films. What makes these horses different from others that have appeared on the silver screen is their rise from trusty steed to a genuine screen personality. A number of horses have enjoyed such fame, often receiving equal or second billing with their human costars.
Buck is a 2011 American documentary film directed by Cindy Meehl. The film focuses on the life, career, and philosophy of the real-life "horse whisperer" Buck Brannaman.
Cindy Meehl is an American documentary filmmaker. Her first film, Buck, was released on June 17, 2011, after a successful set of showings at U.S. film festivals including the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
The Horse Whisperer may refer to a number of articles
Catch My Smoke is a 1922 American silent Western film directed by William Beaudine, based on the novel Shoe-bar Stratton by Joseph Bushnell Ames. It stars Tom Mix, Lillian Rich, and Claude Payton.