Bone Horses
New York school teacher Charlotte Lambert is practical and predictable, and never allows life to veer off course. Until she comes to New Mexico. During one summer in Agua Dulce, a village haunted by a phantom herd of wild horses and where ravens embody the spirits of ancestors, Charlotte’s world is upended as she unearths the details of her mother’s forbidden love affair, chilling murder, and courageous last act of redemption. Pursued by a madman hell-bent on killing her, Charlotte finds shelter, romance, and her own misplaced soul at the desert camp of a surprisingly sophisticated cowboy, and learns how love in its myriad forms is the only path to lasting salvation.
"Bone Horses" is a fine mystery, with complex twists and turns. It is also a paean to the land and especially to its rare wild horses who symbolize all that is wonderful about our high desert country and all that needs our love and protection.” John Nichols
2014 WILLA Literary Award for Contemporary Fiction
Tony Hillerman Award for Best Fiction, 2013
Silver Medal, IPPY Book Awards, Mountain/West
Southwest Books of the Year "Good Read" 2013
"I wondered if this story that appeared to include so many of my passions—the desert, horses, skulls, landscapes, and the peaks and valleys of human terrain—could possibly live up to my expectations. BONE HORSES did, and more." Dawn Wink, Story Circle Reviews
New York school teacher Charlotte Lambert is practical and predictable, and never allows life to veer off course. Until she comes to New Mexico. During one summer in Agua Dulce, a village haunted by a phantom herd of wild horses and where ravens embody the spirits of ancestors, Charlotte’s world is upended as she unearths the details of her mother’s forbidden love affair, chilling murder, and courageous last act of redemption. Pursued by a madman hell-bent on killing her, Charlotte finds shelter, romance, and her own misplaced soul at the desert camp of a surprisingly sophisticated cowboy, and learns how love in its myriad forms is the only path to lasting salvation.
“The landscape, an important part of this story, is beautifully described, while the characters are fully realized, quirky, sad, romantic and even one quite terrifying in his mental illness. This is a literary story, so there’s a lot to absorb. Take your time and savor it.” C.K. Crigger, WWA Roundup Magazine, 2014
"Poling-Kempes beautifully captures the landscape and spirit of New Mexico's high country, seamlessly blending mysticism and human longing to demonstrate that, indeed, home is where the heart is.” Bruce Dinges, Southwest Books of the Year, 2013
"Poling-Kempes has created an engaging plot and managed to clothe it in our time and culture in a way that conveys comforting and disturbing universal truths... the author doesn’t ignore the shadow side of rural New Mexican culture: 'Bone Horses' addresses violence, drugs and alcohol, long-held grudges and prejudices, and extremist religious views. Contemporary issues, including the threat of environmental pollution and the power of education to save lives, are also threaded into the narrative, sans moralizing...
"'Bone Horses' is extremely well-crafted, and its failings are few.” Hollis Walker, The Santa Fe New Mexican
Available in trade paperback and eBook format
La Alameda Press
“BONE HORSES unfolds like a desert sunrise—lifting from the Southwest landscape with a well-crafted storyline that keeps the reader on the path tracking romance, family legends, unsolved murders, buried bones, and elusive wild horses. I found myself drawn into the colorful and mysterious world of Agua Dulce much like I’m drawn into the vibrant and deceptively simple landscape of a Georgia O’Keeffe painting. And, like BONE HORSES’ heroine Charlotte, I found myself not wanting to leave.”
Page Lambert, "In Search of Kinship"