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Elizabeth Letts

Biography

Elizabeth Letts

Elizabeth Letts is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of THE EIGHTY-DOLLAR CHAMPION and THE PERFECT HORSE, which won the PEN Award for Research Nonfiction, and THE RIDE OF HER LIFE. She is also the author of the novels FALLEN FOR FRANCE, FINDING DOROTHY, QUALITY OF CARE and FAMILY PLANNING. She lives in Maryland.

Elizabeth Letts

Books by Elizabeth Letts

by Elizabeth Letts - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Beddou is six years old when he is sent off to apprentice far from his High Atlas village in Morocco. That same month, a magnificent filly is born. For a brief time, the mare belongs to the boy. But Beddou’s heart is broken when a soldier steals his horse and disappears into France just as the Great War roars to a start. Estelle, a young woman in France, finds a distressed Arabian mare wandering alone in the meadow. But soon she loses both the horse and her brother. Thomas is an Englishman hardened by his experience as a wartime veterinarian in France. He finds the mare and promises to protect her --- and the woman who once loved her --- but he doubts his own ability to keep anyone safe. The separate strands of these strangers’ journeys ultimately converge, propelling them to make momentous choices that will change the course of their lives.

by Elizabeth Letts - Biography, History, Nonfiction

In 1954, 63-year-old Maine farmer Annie Wilkins embarked on an impossible journey. She had no money and no family, she had just lost her farm, and her doctor had given her only two years to live. But Annie wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before she died. So she bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men’s dungarees and headed south. Annie, Tarzan and her dog, Depeche Toi, rode straight into a world transformed by the rapid construction of modern highways. In a decade when car ownership nearly tripled, television’s influence was expanding fast, and homeowners began locking their doors, Annie and her four-footed companions inspired an outpouring of neighborliness in a rapidly changing world.

by Elizabeth Letts - Fiction, Historical Fiction

As soon as she learns that MGM is adapting her late husband’s masterpiece, THE WIZARD OF OZ, for the screen, Maud Gage Baum sets about trying to finagle her way onto the set. Nineteen years after Frank’s passing, Maud is the only person who can help the producers stay true to the spirit of the book. But the moment she hears Judy Garland rehearsing the first notes of “Over the Rainbow,” Maud recognizes the yearning that defined her own life story. Judy reminds Maud of a young girl she cared for and tried to help in South Dakota, a dreamer who never got her happy ending. Now, with the young actress under pressure from the studio as well as her ambitious stage mother, Maud resolves to protect her --- the way she tried so hard to protect the real Dorothy.

by Elizabeth Letts - History, Nonfiction

In the chaotic last days of World War II, a small troop of battle-weary American soldiers captures a German spy and makes an astonishing find --- his briefcase is empty but for photos of beautiful white horses that have been stolen and kept on a secret farm behind enemy lines. Hitler has stockpiled the world’s finest purebreds in order to breed the perfect military machine --- an equine master race. But with the starving Russian army closing in, the animals are in imminent danger of being slaughtered for food. With only hours to spare, one of the Army’s last great cavalrymen, American colonel Hank Reed, makes a bold decision --- with General George Patton’s blessing --- to mount a covert rescue operation.

by Elizabeth Letts - Biography, Nonfiction

Elizabeth Letts tells the remarkable story of Snowman and Harry de Leyer, the inseperable horse and rider who became unlikely champions in the 1958 National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden in New York City.