Tough Trails

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

When Ambrose Virgil Metford, 17, has to take his beloved, but badly
injured, pack horse, Blackie, to auction where the horse will be sold to
meat buyers for dog food, he also has to buy Blackie’s replacement.
Ambrose, while in an emotionally vulnerable state, sees his heart win
out over his head as he takes pity on an elderly woman by successfully
bidding on her pet 25-year-old red mare, Society Girl, rather than let
that horse also go to the meat buyers. However, now Ambrose must try to
convince his horse-savvy Uncle Mac, who employs him summers to take
trail-riding customers high up into Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, that
Society Girl can be trained to become a pack horse. He also worries
about the critical reaction of his co-worker, Janice, also 17.
Janice’s prediction that the old horse will not be able to stand up to
the rigours of climbing mountain trails while fully loaded comes true:
Society Girl almost dies from exhaustion while the two teens are
escorting a famous nature photographer and his bratty 10-year-old son,
Ryan, on a week-long trail ride. However, all ends well; Society Girl
finds a new home after proving her worth by saving Ryan during a freak
mountain hailstorm.

Morck’s experience with horses and trail-riding in the mountains is
most evident in Tough Trails. Unlike many titles in the Orca Soundings
series, this book is aimed at an audience that is not limited to older
adolescents; the gentle but engaging animal–human adventure story will
also find a ready audience among middle-school students. Recommended.