Keineth

When Tante, the German caretaker who has raised her, announces she's returning to Europe amid the rumblings of war, eleven-year-old Keineth Randolph faces a childhood shattered. Her father, kind but distant, offers no resistance to the upheaval. Now Keineth must choose: a life with her strict, disapproving Aunt Josephine, or the warm chaos of the Lee family, whose son Billy has just issued a challenge that sets her heart racing. She's never sat a horse in her life, but something in his laughing eyes ignites a daring she didn't know she possessed. As she grips the pony's shaggy sides and feels terror propelling her forward, Keineth discovers that courage isn't the absence of fear it's the decision to ride anyway. Written in 1918, this is a quiet coming-of-age story about the first great losses of childhood and the small, fierce victories that teach us who we might become.