Spirit Ponies

Fragile widow, Helen Duncan, is invited west to visit Torrey and Will Rawling on their peaceful cattle and dude ranch. Helen hopes the time will help her heal. Then, tragedy strikes her long-time friends and she puts aside her own needs to pitch in and help with their incoming guests. Absolutely nothing in Helen’s background prepares her for the twelve quirky, “Hollywood-show biz” people who arrive. But, knowing the week can make or break the future of the ranch, she is determined to make it a success. With the help of an old buckaroo; a pair of curly-haired, testosterone-filled brothers; two unlikely teenagers; and an old jukebox; Helen takes over running the guest lodge operation for one wild and wooly week. Living with the constant companions of anxiety and exhaustion, Helen solves every problem that comes her way except one—her powerful attraction to one of the married guests.

M.A. Moone, is the daughter of a Western dairy farmer father and a teacher mother, a noted California pottery expert. Like her mother, Moone became a teacher. As a young woman, she taught in a remote ranching community where she hunted, fished and volunteered as a "buckaroo" for the local ranchers on weekends. Eventually, she earned a Ph.D. in educational psychology and worked both in the fields of education and mental health. Her later career included research and writing for museums throughout the West. Moone now spends summers riding her horse in the mountains of Central Oregon and her winters writing fiction in Southern Nevada. She writes because she believes there are such things as functional families. Their stories fill her head until they must be committed to print. What she writes features characters grounded in love of country, love of land and love of each other. Both men and women, relate to her characters.