Bean

Strong-willed and more knowledgeable than most everyone when it comes to horses, Pell Ridley cannot reconcile herself to the stifling life of a married woman--not after seeing the endless monotony of poverty, child birth, and death played out in her own parents' household. Desperate for something more, Pell does the only thing she can. She leaves.

Meg Rosoff's The Bride's Farewell (2009) starts on August twelfth, eighteen hundred and fifty something, the day Pell is to be married. She gets out of bed, kisses her sisters goodbye and goes outside to tell her horse, Jack, that they are leaving in the hopes of finding work at Salisbury Fair with one of the numerous horse merchants.  read more »