Share
Save
Fourteen-year-old Kat lives with her widowed father, Luke, and younger brother, Dave, in their remote country farmhouse. She loves exploring the forest surrounding her house, and taking horseback riding lessons at the stable down the road. Her free-spirited father had taught her to love the natural world, and she considers herself a true outdoor girl.
After making a shocking discovery one morning, Kat struggles to rescue Stormwind, her favorite horse at the stable, from its abusive owner. Then her father brings home an unwelcome visitor with a secret that could destroy the way of life that the family loves. This upsetting change sends Kat and her dog, Hesperus, running away on a month-long camping trip in the wilderness with Stormwind. There, she finds a true friend in Randy, a teenage drifter with a mysterious past. After an accident forces them to return to Kat’s house, she must deal with the family problem she’d left behind, and help Randy overcome the memories of his troubled childhood.
“Stormwind of the North Country” is a story about horses and nature, freedom and self-reliance. It is about going after your dreams, being yourself, and standing up for your beliefs. In her adventures at home and in the Adirondack wilderness, Kat learns that friendship and love will solve her problems.
Targeted Age Group:: 10 – 14
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
I was first inspired to write “Stormwind of the North Country” by a strange dream that I had as a horse-crazy ten-year-old. I wrote a short story about the dream, in which a girl rescues an abused horse from an angry, screaming woman who had been chasing it. That story became a part of me, and I just couldn’t let it go. The story grew…and grew…until it filled two tattered notebooks. For the next twenty-two years, I continued working on that book off-and-on through several drafts and re-writes. I’d lose interest in it for several months, and then pick it up again.
When I began writing it, my most desperate wish was for a horse of my own. Writing the story allowed me to live vicariously through the main character’s adventures with her rescued Arabian mare. My experiences living in the Adirondacks also inspired the story, as did my first horse that I finally got when I was twelve. I thought that it would be fun to take my horse and run away into the wilderness to live off the land. I never had the nerve to try it. Kat did, though…and the story turned in a direction that I never could have imagined.
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
Kat, the main character, is a lot like me when I was growing up: she feels misunderstood, prefers walking in the woods with her dog than hanging out with kids her age, and has one hobby that she’s obsessed with: horses. However, she is stronger, braver, more athletic and assertive, and a better horseback rider than I am. It was…freeing, and fun to write about someone so unlike myself in those ways. Many aspects of her personality are based on my own – who I am, and who I wish I was.
I grew up as an only child, and often wished I had a sibling to play with, so that’s why I gave Kat her younger brother, Dave.
In the original story Kat’s best friend, Emily, was a stereotypical girly-girl (unlike tomboy Kat), but she was her ever-present pal. In the book, however, Emily and Kat are growing apart as their lives change over the summer.
At first, I just made up the other characters to fulfill their respective roles in the book: Kat’s mechanic/rock musician father, Luke, his deceitful girlfriend, Lavina, the abusive horse owner, Lorriane Stillwater, the drifter/outdoorsman, Jake, Kat’s male friend, Randy, the violent ex-con villain, Vito, and Judge Brown, who grants Kat possession of her beloved horse, Stormwind. As I wrote and developed the story over the next two decades, however, each character grew and changed in ways that surprised me.
Book Sample
I didn’t know how my dad would react, but now I needed his help. “Luke!” I shouted as Stormwind raced up the driveway, kicking up gravel behind her. “Luke!”
The garage door was closed, the radio silent.
I tied Stormwind to the porch railing and burst into the house. “Dad! Daddy!” I was getting hysterical. “Dad!”
I found him at work redecorating the guestroom, his clothes splattered with fresh paint. “Katherine! What in the -”
“Daddy! It’s Stormwind…and Lorraine, and…she’s got a gun, and…and Commodore’s dead!” I collapsed into a nearby chair and covered my face, shaking, squeezing my eyes shut against the tears that threatened to fall.
He put his hands on my shoulders. “Shhh, Kat…try to calm down, and tell me what happened.”
I took a deep breath and stood up. “Follow me.”
He gasped at the sight of Stormwind, who stood there puffing and trembling with exhaustion, bleeding from the whip wounds across her body. “Oh, my…” He gently touched Stormwind’s sweaty neck as she snorted and danced away.
Luke sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Oh, honey. You were telling me the truth. I should’ve believed you…and now, that poor animal…” He sighed again. “If only I had-”
“It’s not your fault, Luke…”
Suddenly he straightened up, his voice firm. “And it’s not yours, either. It’s that woman’s. You’re not going back there, Katherine…and neither is the horse. Now, we have to get her out of sight. Let’s take her in the barn. We’ve got to get her cleaned up, if she’s gonna be yours.”
“Mine? But I thought you couldn’t afford a horse -”
“I’ll find a way. Now, I’m going to get her some medicine, and I’ll bring the portable phone out in the barn. We’ve gotta make some calls.”
Far down the road, I heard a car being driven at an insane speed by the madwoman we’d just escaped from. “Stillwater!” I screamed. I led Stormwind at a trot toward the barn, but we didn’t make it. The car was here, after almost overturning when it careened into the driveway. Stillwater flew out and would have reached us if Luke had not turned back and stood before Stormwind and me.
“Leave my property, you!” he shouted. “You’re not welcome here!”
“Your daughter stole my horse! I’m simply here to regain my horse!” Stillwater reached over Luke’s shoulder and slapped Stormwind’s muzzle. “She is mine, and you and that little criminal are not to tell me otherwise!”
Stormwind lunged at Stillwater, almost knocking Luke down, and bit Stillwater’s arm. It started bleeding. “Why you…”
Luke pushed her back to her car. “Looks like the horse doesn’t want to be with you,” he said. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough around here? Stormwind means the world to my daughter. She belongs to her.”
“What!”
“Get out of here, before I call the police!”
“The police! You bet I’ll call the police! I won’t stop there! I will take you to court!”
Luke laughed. “That’s just what I was planning on doing. That junkyard of yours will be condemned, and you’ll never lay your hands on another animal, again.”
Stillwater gunned her engine, pulled onto the road, and tore away for home.
