I've had to get rid of all my books a couple times in the past and have always felt like my shelves are incomplete till I've reacquired the Flicka set. I've reread her books many times now and will likely reread them many more, hence the 5 stars. I didn't realize just how well until I moved here and started recognizing the scenery. If you've never been West around Colorado/Wyoming, O'Hara recreates it and captures it in her novels. And the last few pages never fail to bring tears to my eyes.ĭon't read My Friend Flicka too young. It's not all hard-hitting and dramatic moments-there are funny little moments that make you grin, and a casual wealth of detail that makes you feel like you're looking over the shoulder of very real people at their lives and work. It's a sensitively-written novel that deals with the beauty and excitement as well as the harshness and struggles of ranch life the relationship tensions of a rather volatile, albeit essentially loving family and the bittersweet process of a dreamer being brought to face both the pain and joy of real life. But I don't think it was until this latest re-read that I fully appreciated it, even though by now it's familiar enough that I remembered nearly every scene and line-that I was mature enough to see, besides the mere events of the story, what the author was saying through it to feel and understand its themes of love, fear, and dreams.Įven though the central facet of the plot is a young boy's desire to own and gentle a wild filly, it's not just another simple child-and-their-horse story. When I re-read it a few years later, I liked it better. I read it too young when I read it for the first time-pre-teens or very early teens if I remember rightly-and I was rather shell-shocked by it: by the scenes involving animals' injury or death, the occasional harsh language, and simply the intensity of its emotions, particularly those experienced and manifested by the adult characters. Even though the central character is a ten-year-old boy, his story is viewed through the lens of an adult perspective, and indeed almost as much of the book is written from the point of view of Ken's parents as from his own. To Kill a Mockingbird, for instance: I will always be grateful that I didn't get around to reading that until I was in my late teens and able to properly appreciate it. There are certain books that I think are always miscategorized as "children's books" simply because a child character is central to the story, but were really never intended to be. (sources: Current Biography, 1944 Contemporary Authors, 1981) Her literary works are maintained by Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. While she claimed her first love was musical composition, she continued writing fiction and nonfiction.Ī year after her divorce from her second husband in 1947, Ms O’Hara returned to the east coast where she lived in Connecticut until 1968. The rights to performing this as a play or a musical can still be obtained through Dramatists Play Services, New York. She also wrote a musical play called "The Catch Colt" which she later turned into a novel, first published in 1979 in Great Britain. In addition to writing, Ms O’Hara was a successful composer and published numerous songs for the piano. In 1930, during her second marriage, Ms O’Hara moved to a ranch in Wyoming where she wrote her three novels, the classic “My Friend Flicka,” and the sequels “Thunderhead” and “Green Grass of Wyoming,” about the McLaughlin family and the younger son and his horse, Flicka. O’Hara moved to California after her first marriage where she became a screenwriter during the silent film era through the advent of talking movies. O’Hara had two children from her first marriage, Mary O’Hara who died of skin cancer during her teens, and Kent Kane, Jr. Her second marriage to Helge Sture-Vasa from Sweden in 1922 also ended in divorce in 1947. O'hara married Kent Kane Parrot, whom she later divorced. She grew up in Brooklyn Heights, N.Y., where her father was an Episcopal clergyman. Mary O’Hara Alsop, an American author, screenwriter, and composer, was born July 10, 1885, in Cape May, N.J., to Reese Fell Alsop and Mary Lee (Spring).
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