Synopsis:
Thirteen year
old Erin loves horses and riding. After dreaming of the Bronze Age horses, she
is starting to like history. Now curious about Ancient Greek horses, Erin again
drifts into an opal dream.
Agis, a teenage boy, travels alone from Sparta to Athens
where Diodorus gives him work at the stables. Agis earns the trust of a vicious
black stallion, but is targeted by the jealous, Tellus. When the stallion
escapes, Agis is suspected and threatened with punishment of death or slavery.
Will Agis keep his freedom and survive to fulfil his dream of riding a
horse?
When Erin wakes from her dream, she realises she can use
what she has learnt about horses from the Ancient Greeks.
The Marble
Horses, the second book in the Opal Dreaming series, describes
horse riding and care in the Ancient Greek period. Each book in the series
highlights the significant changes in horse riding throughout history and
provides practical riding and handling techniques. Aimed at upper primary age
children.
Opal Dreaming
The Marble Horses is the second book in
the Opal Dreaming series information at
http://www.
Opal Dreaming
The Bronze Horses is the first book in
the Opal Dreaming series available at http://www.
Excerpt
Athens
Unfamiliar sounds and smells filled his mind and Agis
shook his head to clear it. ‘What is that stink?’ he muttered. He huddled on the
ground amongst coarse coils of hemp rope and cane baskets of warm fish
guts.
He closed his eyes to the glare of the morning sun and
thought about the long journey he had undertaken to get this
far.
A shiver ran up his spine. Even as a perioikos – a free man or boy – he
didn’t know what to
expect beyond his home in Sparta, or of the dangers of
travelling alone.
All he could think about was horses. Even when he sat and
turned the potter’s wheel as his father or grandfather moulded the clay into the
everyday pots like hydrias, for
collecting water from the fountain, or the small
amphoras for
storing oil or wine, his mind was on horses. They didn’t make the large,
elegant, patterned red and black glazed pottery he saw in the markets. Theirs
was a small family workshop, and while his father
expected him and his brothers to carry on the craft, he
had other ideas.
Agis didn’t understand his obsession for horses, and was
unable to fight it. He came to accept it as a message from the Gods. He had seen
very few horses, mainly the small, tough, sure-footed native ponies
used
throughout the hills and on the farms in the lowlands.
Only rarely had he seen the larger Thessalian cavalry horses, or those owned by
the wealthy, and he had only heard of the magnificence of the Iberian stallions.
He
read what he could find but burned to learn more, even to
own one – although a humble apprentice like himself could never afford a
horse.
The Bronze
Horses
Thirteen year old Erin loves
everything about horses, but thinks history is boring until her mystical opal
helps her drift into a dream to follow the misadventures of Fayina, a girl of
similar age from a fierce, nomadic, horse riding tribe from the Bronze Age in
3000BC. Fayina is found lost on the
Eurasian Steppe by Arima and his sister Mia and when they take her to their
secret village, the tribe is wary of her. She finds life in the village very
different, especially when she understands they don’t know how to ride the
small, but strong Steppe horses. Accused of stealing one of the tribe’s best
horses, Fayina is threatened with banishment unless she can teach the village
people some of her horse and riding knowledge. Can Fayina save herself and ever return to her own
people?
When Erin wakes from her dream, she
realises history is not so bad, as long as there are horses involved, and many
of the things she knows and does are not new and modern at all.
The Bronze Horses shows the early relationships people
have with horses and that the history of horses and riding is also our history.
The Opal Dreaming series will highlight some of the significant changes in horse
riding over thousands of years and pass on horse riding and handling
techniques.
Bio
Jennifer Crane
lives in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland Queensland and has two daughters. From an
administrative background she leapt, with relief, into creative writing to
dabble in poetry, short stories and novels for children and adults. While
inspired by life events, she finds those random ideas that pop into her head are
the most fun to write. In 2008 she self-published ‘Spillover: A Memoir’ about the death of
her horse from Hendra virus. She has had horses all her life which
inspired The Bronze Horses, the first book in the Opal Dreaming series,
published in 2012 with The Marble Horses in 2014. She also helps local war
widows record their life stories. She has had a number of short
stories published
online and in anthologies and achieved some minor awards for her writing
although she is still aiming for that win.
Other Book
Spillover: A
Memoir
On 14 June 2006, Clive, a thoroughbred gelding, died an
agonizing death.
It was a death that would mark the beginning of an
emotional nightmare for his owner, Jennifer Crane and her family. A death that
would receive national media coverage as only the sixth recorded case in Australia and
would result in an independent Queensland Parliamentary Review.
Unknown to Jennifer, the large colony of flying foxes,
camped in the neighbouring forest and spilling over onto her property in the
Sunshine Coast hinterland, had brought with it the deadly Hendra virus that infected her horse
and put her own life at risk.
Jennifer’s account of the death of her horse due to the
Hendra virus portrays the pain of
losing a beloved member of the family, her encounter with Queensland’s
biosecurity procedures and a decision to try to increase the awareness of the
fatal consequences when the balance of nature is tipped.
Links.
Books are also avail from
Books of Buderim and Rosetta Books Maleny
All books regularly
posted on ebay
All books avail as
ebooks.
