Bea and the New Deal Horse

Thirteen-year-old Bea Davis wakes up in the hayloft of a Virginia horse farm to find that her father has left her and her eight-year-old sister, Vivian, there with nothing but a note. The stock market crash has cost the family his bank job, their house and, in the end, their mother. The farm's owner, the formidable Mrs. Scott, is struggling through drought and the Depression herself and may have to sell her horses, starting with a difficult chestnut jumper. Bea understands the horse's fear and sees a chance in him: if he can compete at horse shows, he might save the farm and win her a place in Mrs. Scott's home. L.M. Elliott's middle-grade novel won the 2024 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction.