Piebald

In her brief book Nicola Davies has achieved an extraordinary combination: the deeply serious and frightening realities of modern life set alongside a very different kind of story that has fascinated young readers, mainly girls, for generations.

The setting is a small town where pits and factories have closed down, leaving workers and families abandoned, houses unsafe, and streets taken over by criminals. Children and teenagers are forced into delivering drugs to the few remaining adults left in the town. Davies’ story centres on Moxie, a girl whose mother is sick, whose father is missing, and whose little brother requires constant care. When Moxie discovers a wild piebald horse in the woods – and realises there are others among the trees – she finds that these creatures help her and her family resist the criminals who are tightening their hold.

Davies writes simply but powerfully, offering readers an extremely exciting and sometimes terrifying small book as we face the dangers that Moxie and her young brother endure. As Piebald, the horse she names, cleverly aids the family, readers may feel that the other piebald horses have appeared almost mysteriously to protect them. Are they somehow magical, we wonder? This novel is short, but it is filled with excitement, terror and mystery – a splendid, gripping and deeply thoughtful story.