Although author and longtime equestrian Mary Midkiff once presented a straightforward book on women and horses (Fitness, Performance and the Female Equestrian), she now explores the more ethereal terrain of this compelling feminine attraction. "Women and horse have always been drawn to one another," Midkiff writes. "They rode together in Greek myth and Celtic poem, Native American legend and Wild West folktales.... Women and horses emerge in life and literature as a huge tribe of spiritual sisters." (In fact, more than one million girls and women are involved in horse-related activities in the U.S. alone.)

Midkiff spent years researching this exquisitely written book that loosely mirrors the arc of a women's life. Using her life story as the backdrop, Midkiff shows how horses nurture feminine development. For example, the freedom to roam the earth on horseback liberates the dreams and ambitions of a young girl. Or how an affinity with horses can help awaken a teenager's emerging sensuality. And when women reach full adulthood, horses help women stay compassionate and spiritually grounded. This is a highly recommended book for older teens (15 and up) and women who value the equestrian relationship as much as the riding. --Gail Hudson


From Booklist
In a book that is part autobiography, part social and natural history, and part literary work, Midkiff views the special bond between horses and women. There are few girls who have not longed for a horse, drawn horses, or pretended to be one, but unlike the author, few women are able to enjoy a lifetime's association with horses. Born into a family whose business was connected to the Kentucky thoroughbred world, she inherited her grandfather's special affinity with the animal. By telling the story of her own connections and interposing it with those of other women from the past and present, she finds universality in the emotional and psychic bond that exists between the two species. The passages of poetry and prose borrowed from literary works set the tone and enhance the book's 12-part structure. Horsewomen, or women who long to be horsewomen, will thoroughly enjoy this book. Danise Hoover
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
“Lyrical. Poetic. Powerful...Destined to become a classic...a stirring volume about the profound and intense relationship between women and horses. Midkiff is a splendid writer and has produced a truly breakthrough book. Run out and buy a copy for yourself, and pick up an extra for your favorite girlfriend.”
–Horsemen’s Yankee Pedlar

“Lyrical and compelling, Midkiff’s prose speaks to the depth of a woman’s soul.”
–Susan Chernak McElroy, New York Times bestselling author of Animals As Teachers & Healers


Review
?Lyrical. Poetic. Powerful...Destined to become a classic...a stirring volume about the profound and intense relationship between women and horses. Midkiff is a splendid writer and has produced a truly breakthrough book. Run out and buy a copy for yourself, and pick up an extra for your favorite girlfriend.?
?Horsemen?s Yankee Pedlar

?Lyrical and compelling, Midkiff?s prose speaks to the depth of a woman?s soul.?
?Susan Chernak McElroy, New York Times bestselling author of Animals As Teachers & Healers


Book Description
From a renowned horsewoman and gifted storyteller comes this groundbreaking new book that explores a powerful relationship like no other: the magical kinship between women and horses.

Drawing from myth and literature, the author’s own experiences, and interviews with countless women, we learn, through women’s deeply personal stories, how horses enrich our lives and connect us to nature–making us readers of rhythm and invisible signs, helping us harness our youthful sexuality, sharing the “horsepower” we need to reach our dreams. And here we see how, for thousands of years, the deep kinship between women and horses has connected us to our most intimate feelings of delight, helped us learn to solve problems, and set our creativity free.

From the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer to the fiction of Jane Austen to folktales from around the world, She Flies Without Wings uses great literature and myth to encompass a wide spectrum of beliefs and perspectives–and creates a true celebration of speed, air, and the spectacular animal that connects us with both.

Filled with the moving lessons–-about sensuality, commitment, power, nurturance, and spirituality–women riders have known for centuries, written with a loving hand by an expert equestrian, She Flies Without Wings is an eloquent paean to a pairing that enlivened history, inspired literature, and continues to enchant us all.


From the Inside Flap
From a renowned horsewoman and gifted storyteller comes this groundbreaking new book that explores a powerful relationship like no other: the magical kinship between women and horses.

Drawing from myth and literature, the author’s own experiences, and interviews with countless women, we learn, through women’s deeply personal stories, how horses enrich our lives and connect us to nature–making us readers of rhythm and invisible signs, helping us harness our youthful sexuality, sharing the “horsepower” we need to reach our dreams. And here we see how, for thousands of years, the deep kinship between women and horses has connected us to our most intimate feelings of delight, helped us learn to solve problems, and set our creativity free.

From the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer to the fiction of Jane Austen to folktales from around the world, She Flies Without Wings uses great literature and myth to encompass a wide spectrum of beliefs and perspectives–and creates a true celebration of speed, air, and the spectacular animal that connects us with both.

Filled with the moving lessons–-about sensuality, commitment, power, nurturance, and spirituality–women riders have known for centuries, written with a loving hand by an expert equestrian, She Flies Without Wings is an eloquent paean to a pairing that enlivened history, inspired literature, and continues to enchant us all.


From the Back Cover
“Lyrical. Poetic. Powerful...Destined to become a classic...a stirring volume about the profound and intense relationship between women and horses. Midkiff is a splendid writer and has produced a truly breakthrough book. Run out and buy a copy for yourself, and pick up an extra for your favorite girlfriend.”
–Horsemen’s Yankee Pedlar

“Lyrical and compelling, Midkiff’s prose speaks to the depth of a woman’s soul.”
–Susan Chernak McElroy, New York Times bestselling author of Animals As Teachers & Healers


About the Author
Mary D. Midkiff is the creator of Women and Horses, an equestrian fitness program. She has been conducting presentations and clinics around the world for the past ten years. She is also the president of Equestrian Resources, a marketing film specializing in the promotion of show, sport, and recreational horse activities. She is the author of Fitness, Performance, and the Female Equestrian, and lives in Boulder, Colorado.


From the Hardcover edition.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A Natural Affinity

I grew up in New England: Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island. I never rode as a child, although I had my own imaginary horse that I rode around my grandparents' backyard. I obsessively drew horses and wrote poems about them colliding in the sky with brilliant colors around them. Returning to this subject matter as an adult, and subsequently learning how to ride, is like reliving the adolescence I never had and fulfilling a dream deferred.
-- Patricia Cronin, "Pony Tales," from Horse People: Writers and Artists on the Horses They Love


When I was six, I was a horse.

My home was in the heart of central Kentucky on just the sort of white-fenced Thoroughbred horse farm the words "bluegrass" and "Kentucky" suggest. My father managed the breeding farm and crop operations, which gave my family the right to live in the manager's house. While I slept in this house, I lived as much as possible in the barns and pastures where the rest of my herd grazed. That's how I thought of the mares and foals and weanlings and yearlings at Hartland Farm: as my herd.

If you had spied me with my herd, you would have seen a girl small for her age, perched precariously atop the post-and-board fence that bordered the Hartland fields. You might have noticed legs too short to reach the second rail. You would not have known I was a horse and that I felt my legs were long and fluid as young saplings stirring in the wind. Even a foal learning how to use her legs can be elegant.

When I leaped off that rail and into the horses' pastures, as I often did, I galloped with grace and purpose. I could run with the breezes, or stand still and feel them skim over my flesh. I could bounce out a rhythm or roll down a hill. I could swing my hair, and it would wave in my trot like a long, flowing tail. I learned all this -- and more -- from horses. I saw that when a horse moves across the open field, it's as if she's following the call of a voice in the air. Her head rises, her ears prick forward to receive a message in horse frequency, and her nostrils open to catch sensory signals drifting by. She doesn't use her tongue to respond; she pushes out feral answers from the hollow between her ribs. At times, all four of her great limbs leave the ground in a display of perfect suspension -- one hoof coming down, followed by another and another and another until all have touched earth just long enough to renew the effortless cycle. She gains ground but without need for anything more than stirring the air and enjoying a good talk with her universe. When I moved in the way my herd moved, I felt in my legs the same balance and rhythm and coordination I saw in theirs and I strained toward the voices they heeded. I gained fluency in a body language my own small body was not born knowing but which it longed to speak. In the fields, I listened to the way the horses cleared their nostrils when grazing and called to each other in whispered rumbles of affection or squealed with joy or warning. This was the language of my herd, and I studied it as diligently as I studied my other language, the one of my family. I became good at whinnying, snorting, and delivering those sounds, and the horses learned my voice.

Occasionally they included me in their play. They would nibble at my ankles or rub their flanks against my own knobby knees. When I poked my head through the openings between the planks and extended my arm forward, curious foals came to smell my hand. After they got to know me and recognize my scent, they came even closer -- nuzzling my head and trying to take a taste of my pigtails. I giggled at the feel of their busy lips on my head and their warm breath on my neck.

A horse's acceptance remains one of my earliest memories of belonging. While I struggled to find who I was and would be as a person, horses gave me my first intimation of what acceptance and belonging could feel like.

. . . .

This baby arrived amid a herd of horses, horses of different colors.

White horses ride in on the breath of the wind. White horses from the east where plants of golden chamisa shimmer in the moonlight.

She arrived amid a herd of horses. Blue horses enter from the south bringing the scent of prairie grasses from the small hills outside.
. . . .

She arrived amid a herd of horses.

Black horses came from the north. They are the lush summers of Montana and still white winters of Idaho.

Chamisa, Chamisa Bah. It is all this that you are. You will grow: laughing, crying, and we will celebrate each change you live.

You will grow strong like the horses of your past. You will grow strong like the horses of your birth.

-- By Luci Tapahonso Blue Horses Rush In
For Chamisa Bah Edmo, Shisoi 'alathathjith 'naaghigii



When I was a girl of six, I thought I was the only girl-horse in the land and the broodmares and offspring of Hartland my only herd. Now I know horses touch the souls of many women.

Horses are giant yet generous with their strength, their power, and their gentle affection. By their very natures, they embody and resolve the contradictions we all struggle with: They are strong and soft, calm and driven, wild and manageable, needy and independent. In the presence of horses, our impulses of nurturing and our urgent needs of support, strength, and confidence come together, live together, and express themselves together without the noise of intellectualism. We see that the horse lives its own life, speaks in its own way, moves where it needs to go. Its directness and simplicity offer a thousand-pound counterpoint to our own complicated and often less-honest human interactions. The horse shows us how to be complete.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Noting that more than 80% of the participants in American horse-related activities are girls and women, Kentucky native Midkiff explores her own experiences to explain this resilient tie. Horse whispering in a new key.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

From a renowned horsewoman and gifted storyteller comes this groundbreaking new book that explores a powerful relationship like no other: the magical kinship between women and horses.

Drawing from myth and literature, the author’s own experiences, and interviews with countless women, we learn, through women’s deeply personal stories, how horses enrich our lives and connect us to nature–making us readers of rhythm and invisible signs, helping us harness our youthful sexuality, sharing the “horsepower” we need to reach our dreams. And here we see how, for thousands of years, the deep kinship between women and horses has connected us to our most intimate feelings of delight, helped us learn to solve problems, and set our creativity free.

From the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer to the fiction of Jane Austen to folktales from around the world, She Flies Without Wings uses great literature and myth to encompass a wide spectrum of beliefs and perspectives–and creates a true celebration of speed, air, and the spectacular animal that connects us with both.

Filled with the moving lessons–-about sensuality, commitment, power, nurturance, and spirituality–women riders have known for centuries, written with a loving hand by an expert equestrian, She Flies Without Wings is an eloquent paean to a pairing that enlivened history, inspired literature, and continues to enchant us all.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly