The author's wife wrote The Roadmap to Holland in which she related the birth and adjusting to a child with Down Syndrome. Now from a totally different perspective Mr. Groneberg is telling his reactions and adjustments to the same. ( )

I loved Tom's The Secret Life of Cowboys, so was looking forward to this kinda sequel, more about Montana. I was not disappointed. I was a bit flummoxed at first when he started talking about another book he was reading, the memoir of a late 19th century cowboy ("Teddy Blue" Abbott), We Pointed Them North. I mean this is supposed to be a book about a 21st century cowboy - or cowboy wannabe. But it all works out very neatly. The two stories fit together remarkably well. Teddy Abbott was a man who didn't want to be tied down by the ordinariness of farm work. He wanted to "cowboy," and he did for nearly thirty years, before marrying and settling down to raise several children. Tom Groneberg, college educated, didn't want to become just another company man, or be shackled to the rat race of 20th (and 21st) century life. He too wanted to cowboy. And so he has dabbled at it for the past fifteen years or so. Fortunately, he found a woman who has put up with Tom chasing his dream of the western life. By the end of One Good Horse, Tom still isn't completely sure how his life will turn out. But he has taken his cue from the old cowboy Teddy Blue, who listed only one vocation or accomplishment on his tombstone: Father. Groneberg confides that he has always had a "nervous gene" - that he's always been at least a little terrified that he'll screw up. As a father, he has not. His assessment of himself as a husband and father is, I think, exceedingly modest and self-effacing. True, he still wants something just for himself - even if it's only a good horse. But that's not selfishness; it's simply his own way of trying to hang onto his dream. It may be a foolhardy dream these days, but it is nevertheless an admirable and bravely Quixotic one. At the end of this book, he gives wise advice to his three small sons, to be read at a later date. Then he says, simply, I'm done. I hope, Tom, that you're not done dreaming, because dreams are important, no matter how old you are. And I certainly hope you're not done writing, because I want to hear more of your story. Cowboys are important, sure, but even old Teddy Blue would tell you that storytellers are even more important. Keep on telling your story, Tom. Your boys will know you better one day. ( )

"A horse is a horse of course, of course/and no one can talk to a horse, of course."

Those of a certain age will recognize the opening lyrics of the Mr. Ed television show of the 1960s and while the world isn't exactly filled with talking horses, there are plenty of people who consider the hoofed ones their most loving and faithful companions. To them, a horse is not just a horse. Of course, you can find interspecies devotion just about anywhere two-legged and four-legged creatures get together; but horse lovers are often a breed apart in fanatic attachment to their animals. In many cases, it's not just about the pleasures of pet ownership, it's the therapeutic solace horses seem to provide with their combination of muscular, thunder-hooved power and velvet-muzzle tenderness.

Tom Groneberg knows how horses can help heal a broken human soul. Over the years, he worked with horses on dude ranches, wrangling outfits and, briefly, a rodeo. In the years since he moved to Montana from Chicago, Groneberg ate, slept and breathed horses, but had never owned one himself. In his first book, The Secret Life of Cowboys, he described how he awkwardly assimilated into the world of men and their mounts. Now, in One Good Horse, he gives us a moving account of his love affair with one particular horse--a scrawny, chocolate-brown two-year-old he names Blue after a legendary horseman, Teddy "Blue" Abbott.

As he and his wife Jennifer raise their son Carter in Montana's Flathead Valley, Groneberg starts to feel his life is incomplete. Jennifer is expecting twins and he's living out his boyhood dream of working with horses, but still he thinks there's something missing. As he does chores on another man's ranch, he writes:

I think, perhaps for the first time, that I should have my own horse. If I walked out into a pasture with a halter, it would nicker and trot toward me. I wouldn't have to decide which horse to saddle, which animal to trust. If I had a good horse, I could give it my life. I could ride it for years. We could grow old together. Then I would give it to Carter. His own horse, to ride, to have, because I know I will not always be there for him.

With all the demands of being a good husband, father and ranch hand, Groneberg worries that he's stretched thin in too many different directions and that he's letting everyone down, including himself. Getting a horse, he thinks, could either be a really good idea or a really bad idea--a conflict he wrestles with for most of the book.

Eventually, he finds Blue, a young horse which isn't getting the best treatment from his owner. Groneberg spends several pages debating on whether or not to buy the horse, and then a couple dozen more pages trying to find a place to board his new purchase. Taken on the surface, One Good Horse might seem a bit ordinary and uneventful. Why, you ask yourself, would you want to spend hundreds of pages reading about a man buying a horse--a book where one of the big action scenes comes when a skittish horse finally learns to walk forward with a rider on its back?

Training him has been so easy, such a pleasure. When I thought about getting a colt, I imagined the worst--resistance, bucking, sore muscles, maybe even broken bones. I thought I wanted that fight, thought I wanted to feel physical pain, to bleed. There are so many things that might have happened to me if the wrong horse had come along. I could have ended up in the hospital, or worse. But instead, I found Blue, who treated me kindly. He gave me what I needed, though I didn't know it at the time.

But One Good Horse is much more than a cowboy-horse love story; it's a tale that dives deep under the surface of its simple, straightforward prose. As he works with Blue and as he learns more about his neighbors in the pristine northwest Montana valley, Groneberg begins to see how things happen for a reason. He buys a horse, his wife gives birth to twins, he works hard to get his horse comfortable with a saddle, one of his newborn sons is diagnosed with Down Syndrome, his entire life threatens to unravel at the seams.

There are several different strands threading throughout One Good Horse: there's the story of Blue the horse (occasionally told from the horse's perspective), there's the struggle of Groneberg to come to grips with himself as a father and a husband, and there's a narrative about Teddy "Blue" Abbott and his cowboy adventures in the late 1800s. By book's end, Groneberg manages to tie all the pieces together in pages that practically crescendo with emotion.

Let's face it, sometimes, we need a memoir where the author writes about what could only be called "regular life." In these pages, there are no root canals without novocain, no deviant spirals into alcoholism and drug abuse, no childhood traumas involving wire hangers. This is a simple--but achingly beautiful--story about a man, his horse, his family and the land where all three live in uneasy harmony. ( )