Scorpio Races
Maggie Stiefvater
2011, 409 pages
Fiction
Are you a book-loving high school student, are you close to one, or do you sometimes feel like one? Do you know about The Flume: New Hampshire Teen Reader’s Choice Award? Every winter, teen readers nominate their favorite fiction and nonfiction titles, published within the last two years.
One of the finalists for the 2013 Flume is Maggie Stiefvater’s Scorpio Races, the tale of two young horse lovers on the isolated and struggling island of Thisby. Each November, the bloodthirsty and lightning-fast “capaill uisce” horses emerge from the sea. Local riders pair off with the horses for the Scorpio Races, an annual event which brings tourists (and their much needed cash) to the island. Four-time champion Sean Kendrick has tamed his beloved water horse Corr enough to keep him year-round at his boss’s stables. Sean dreams of another victory, and winning enough money to buy Corr’s and his own freedom. Kate “Puck” Connolly, an orphan who lost her parents to a wild horse attack, lives in near-poverty with her two brothers. In order to postpone her older brother’s plan to leave the island, and maybe even to save the family home, Puck enters the Scorpio Races with her horse Dove. But Dove is just an ordinary land horse, and Puck is the first female to ever enter the race. Will the chauvinistic riders accept her in the competition? Does her horse have the slightest chance of competing against the mythical beasts? How can Sean and Puck help each other, without dooming their own chances of winning?
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