Does a family mystery stand in the way of saving Kip's
best friend?
Katherine Pearl Baker--"Kip" for short--is the only child on
her family's rural peach farm. She longs for a pet to ease the loneliness.
Unfortunately, her father has an angry opposition to all animals--horses in
particular. Why he dislikes them is a confounding mystery.
Hiding in the woods on the Fourth of July, Kip encounters a
bedraggled donkey with one eye and a floppy ear. Immediately smitten and
compelled to protect him, she feeds him biscuits and takes him home. When it is
discovered the donkey fled an abusive owner, Kip's father finally relents,
reluctantly allowing him to stay.
Kip is elated when her grandfather agrees to help her foster
the donkey, who she names "Liberty Biscuit," along with two emaciated horses
removed by the local sheriff from the same home, as the cruelty case goes to
court. While caring for the animals, Kip's happiness is overshadowed by a
shocking discovery in a trunk in the family farm's hayloft--a faded photograph
of her father as a boy that reveals secrets long kept.
A court order to return the horses, and even worse, Kip's
beloved Liberty Biscuit, to the owner who had starved and beaten them, throws Kip's
world into turmoil. She knows she must find a way to keep them, or she will
have betrayed the best friend she has ever had. But saving the animals means
risking the complete unraveling of her family as she exposes the long-buried
truth about a tragic accident and a hurt like she's never known before.
Bowles, Melanie Sue: - When
Melanie Sue Bowles stumbled across the quote, "The purpose of life is to
live a life of purpose," she loved it so much that it became the steadfast
philosophy by which she has lived her entire adult life. Unwanted, elderly, and
abused horses became her purpose, and she and her husband Jim began Proud
Spirit Horse Sanctuary with one horse in need on five acres of land in rural
Florida. Their facility grew to hundreds of acres in Georgia, and then North
Carolina, where rescued animals were allowed to roam as natural herds. Over the
years, Melanie and Jim have intervened on behalf of over three hundred
downtrodden horses, many of them coming to the sanctuary to live out their
lives in peace and dignity. Their story has been featured on PBS and in three
books Bowles has written about the Sanctuary's animal residents. Bowles comes
from a large family, many of whom own horses and love all animals as much as
she does, including nieces, nephews, and grandchildren who helped inspire the
characters in her middle grade novels Liberty Biscuit and Little
Pearl.
