Books, Mud and Compost. And Horses.

Natalie Keller Reinert’s heroines are tricky to like, at least at first. The heroine of Ambition, Jules, has come up the hard way. She was the horse-mad girl without the horse, who earned rides and teaching through slog. “I was child labor and I was proud of it,” she says. All she wanted to do was ride. The barn where she worked was for the children of the rich, who soon worked out Jules’ position in the scheme of things: right at the bottom. And they let her know it, “accidentally” spilling shampoo in the troughs she was filling; dropping tack they knew she had to clean in the mud. Because she was just the help, and they could get away with it. It was enough to sour anyone, and Jules is sour. She’s determined she’ll succeed on her own, and if sheer, hard, passionate graft could do it, she’d be in the Olympic team already. But as we find out, it’s not enough. Graft, even when allied to talent, isn’t enough to win you the scholarship you need in order to keep your stable afloat...