Patricia Calvert
The Snowbird
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1980, cover art Honi Werner
Macmillan, London,
1983
Signet Books, pb
Atheneum, 1998
The silver white foal was born in Dakota Territory in 1883. Orphan Willie Bannerman
( a girl, despite the name) has
arrived from Tennessee with her brother to live with
their uncle and aunt, and falls for the foal. Life has been hard,
but now they see
snowbirds flying in from the sea, Willie’s Irish aunt thinks their luck will change.
Disorientated
after the death of her parents, Willie begins to piece her life together
again.
Money Creek Mare
Charles Scribners' Sons, New York, 1981, cover art by Ruth Sanderson
Signet, paperback
Ella Rae Carmody feels older than both her parents: her mother has gone to Hollywood
trying to be a star, and
her father gambles on horses. Ella’s father wins a crippled
red mare in a card game. She has Man O’ War as
one of her ancestors, and Ella and
her father dream of using the mare to found a horse farm -
Ella
gets a job as a housemaid with Mrs. Puckett-
is more than she bargained for, seeing in Ella Rae "something
between a longed-
The Stone Pony
Charles Scribners' Sons, New York, 1982, cover art Debbi Chabrian
JoBeth Cunningham’s sister, Ashley, dies. She was good at everything, and won prizes
for her riding. JoBeth
struggles to overcome her grief, and her guilt at being the
one left alive, by solving the mystery of some strange
letters carved on a stone pony
her father, a museum director, buys as an exhibit. She meets Luke, who has
his own
grief and guilt, and he shows her how to face life and not run away.
Patricia Calvert (date of birth uncertain but possibly 1931) spent the first years of her life living in a cabin in the Montana mountains with her family. Not only was her mother a vivid teller of tales about her own life, she also read to her children, and not just the standard childhood fare either. Detective stories and love stories were on the menu too. It was a childhood spent roaming free, with plenty of animals for company. "It was a magic world for any child, one in which lodgepole pines grew like arrows toward a sky that seemed always blue. When I was older I had a sassy little horse named Redbird to ride, a collie named Bruno to keep me company, and a calico cat named Agamemnon to sleep at the foot of my bed,"
(Something About the Author). Patricia found school difficult because she was dyslexic, but her mother worked hard with her and she learned to read. By the time she was ten, she had decided she wanted to be a writer.
After university, she became a senior editorial assistant at the Mayo Clinic. The Snowbird was her first novel, and she has gone on to write numerous children’s books, three in all being about horses. Her books are aimed at a young adult readership, and are about the journeys her characters go on. She said: “"We are all emigrants from the same country—the land of childhood. What I want to do is write about the journey all of us have taken—or are in the process of taking—from that special place."
Finding the books: Money Creek Mare is not particularly expensive, but not the easiest book in the world to track down. Neither it nor The Stone Pony had a British publication. The Stone Pony is cheap, but not particularly common. The Snowbird had a British publication: it’s usually reasonably priced but is not spectacularly common. In short, there’s not a huge amount of her books around apart from the first, The Snowbird, but so far they’re not expensive.
Many thanks to Susan Bourgeau for all her help with the books and their contents.
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