Review #5

Shadow Horse

By: Alison Hart

          Thirteen-year-old Jas Schuler is sitting in the hallway of a court room. She has just gotten out of juvenile detention. She knows she is going to lose. No one wins anything when they are up against Hugh Robicheaux. She tells everyone what she did was out of anger and distress, but she knows the truth. Not only why she hit Hugh with the hoof pick, but he was the one who poisoned her horse, Whirlwind.

          When Jas is tried and sentenced to parole. She is put in foster care for 43 days too. After she finds her prize winning horse in its stall dead, her grandpa, who also happens to be her only relative alive, has a stroke and is put in a nursing home. Hugh threatens Jas before she leaves. He tells her “If you breathe a word of your suspicions, I will make sure your grandpa pays for it.” She tells the judge and her lawyer that she was so distraught during all of the things going on so she struck Hugh with a hoof pick out of anger.  

             Jas’s Foster agent tells Jas she is being sent to a farm with horses. The name of the farm is Second Chance Farm. She soon finds out how it got its name. The day she arrives she meets a boy named Chase. One day her foster mother, named Diane, tells her Chase can’t come to the auction and invites Jas. Jas reluctantly agrees and the next day they leave to the auction. While at the auction Jas sees a horse that seems sick. She knows what might be wrong with him so she follows the guy leading the horse to get a better look at it. She convinces Diane to buy the horse so she can help it.

          When the horse is let out into the pasture, he decides to jump a five foot fence and chase around cows. Jas starts to get suspicious about the horse. She does a little digging and finds out something that changes her whole view on what happened to Whirlwind.