Aryn Kyle's The God of Animals is a moving, beautifully crafted novel about families, horses, love, death, class in America, and serious weather.Narrated by a twelve-year-old girl, it still contains a full adult measure of betrayal and desire and complex joy, and has a terrifying momentum by the end, It's a wonderful book.

When her older sister runs away to marry a rodeo cowboy; twelve-year-old Alice Winston is left to bear the brunt of her family's troubles--a depressed, bedridden mother; a reticent, overworked father; and a rundown horse ranch in Desert Valley; Colorado. To make ends meet, the Winstons board the horses of rich neighbors, and as their lives become intertwined with the lives of their clients, Alice is drawn into an adult world of secrets and hard truths. She soon discovers that people--including herself--can be cruel, can lie and cheat, and every once in a while, can do something heartbreaking and selfless.

A wise and haunting novel about the different guises of love and the steep tolls on the road to adulthood, The GodofAnimaL-is impossible to forget.