Collective Marks Book

Over the years, social worker Annie Trowbridge has worked with foster homes, schools, and other community resources to help Michael Ross, just turned eighteen, become a productive citizen, but with only partial success. Michael has only one consistent attribute?a fascination with horses. Annie sees in this interest a possible solution to his poor work history and repeated brushes with the law, and when she is called by the police to say that he is in trouble again, she makes one last effort to find him work with a horse trainer, Erik Sarmento, on an isolated horse farm. The ensuing struggle between the volatile, defensive Michael and the hard, unsympathetic trainer is the background of the novel and the means by which Michael learns that he is dealing with both a gifted trainer and a potentially dangerous man. A delinquent 18-year-old with a passion for horses learns valuable lessons from an unsympathetic horse trainer. Although the story deals with a rare form of competitive horse training?dressage?the author's vivid descriptions successfully integrate the concept into the narrative. In horse training terms, "collective marks" are the judges' scores for a dressage horse and its rider. Feldman extends the metaphor throughout the story, suggesting that collective marks only accrue when an effective balance of power is struck between the student and teacher. A carefully plotted coming-of-age story about the bounds of authority. -Kirkus Discoveries Read More