Anake Wolmerans, aspiring to represent the United States in the 2012 Olympiad, crashes in the final jump-off round of a stadium jumping championship and her injury destroys her right-hand peripheral vision in both eyes. She and André Brink, her trainer, withdraw to California's Santa Ynez Valley determined to still make the U.S. Olympic Dressage team. They start from scratch training her on her Friesian Stallion, Élan, to ride as if blindfolded. The exhausting process challenges to master each dressage level all the way up to forth level and onto the first international level of Prix Saint Georges. Many years her senior, André serves as her eyes, mentor and business manager, bonding with her until they are inseparable. Her performance at progressively higher levels draws increasing attention to them. Having saved her vision, her neurosurgeon is inspired to provide financial help through his hunt club members and sends his dressage-riding teenage daughter, Madison, to live with them. She bonds with André to achieve astounding results very quickly while Anake accepts an invitation to attend a high level annual dressage clinic in Holland. Her famous host motivates her to ride Intermediare I and II, as well as Grand Prix on the back of his famous Warmblood, Breda. She leaves Europe with a strong affection for her imposing host, Jan Prinsloo, with the ultimate goal of including Grand Prix Freestyle They find it increasingly difficult to hide her sight impairment from dressage federation observers as they turn their attention to showing at important championship shows on the West Coast with a final appearance in Las Vegas. Madison has her own challenges set by André to take her horse through level three on the same trip. Anake begins to draw the attention of the equestrian press while Madison discovers Renata, a beautiful Brazilian Olympian, watching Anake closely enough to be a Dressage Federation observer. The stress to exceed each previous triumph along with the irritation of André's attention to Madison, wears on Anake who begins to behave aggressively toward her. When he sets a trap for Renata, the beautiful Brazilian, to ride Élan against Anake in Portland to elevate Renata's appreciation of Anake's depth of ability, it almost brings their relationship to a breaking point. They encounter the Brazilian again at a Los Angeles show and Anake befriends her to discover that she bore Prinsloo a child out of wedlock two years earlier and invites her to stay with them for the next show in Las Vegas. André hears that Renata's grandfather had taken her child into custody in Brazil leaving her stranded abroad to fend for herself and steps in to convince her Stanford MBA father to make peace with her and to persuade her grandfather to release the child to her. With the specter of added competition for André's attention from this new formidable dressage figure, Anake overdoses on Bols Gin an hour before her Grand Prix Freestyle test. With the aid of the neurosurgeon, André revives her in time for the test which falls slightly short of expectation, but it sours her relationship with him to a point that he packs her off to a wild animal camp in Botswana on the Caprivi Strip where he and several associates had contrived to save a rich heritage of wild animals during the Angolan war. Anake seeks comfort in the arms of Rolf one of André's bosom friends. When this comes to his attention André decides to encourage the courtship to ensure her security and to preserve at least their training relationship. At arms-length they hold it together through a vigorous show series at Grand Prix level in Florida which almost assures her of a place on the next U.S. Olympic Dressage Team, but causes a nervous breakdown which hospitalizes her in a psychiatric treatment facility in Wickenburg, Arizona.
About the Author: I was born in the northeastern part of South Africa near the Lebombo Mountains which forms the boundary with Mozambique. We lived in a Gold Mining town in the Drakensberg Mountains called Pilgrims Rest where my father was the District Surgeon. There was a steep pass down the precipitous edge of the gorge which led from a town called Graskop to the Bushfelt below which stretched out as far as the eye could see. That is the country that will always live in my soul. Amongst his black patients my father was known as "siksikane," the man with a knife. I came to North America as a young engineer with expertise in thermodynamics to go to work in the Canadian aircraft industry in the nineteen fifties during the Cold War when the object was to outpace the Soviet Union in defensive capability. For the next dozen years I was wrapped up in super-secret projects which was then the creative center of America. It all ended with the war in Vietnam which in history will be seen as America's nemeses. After that I made my living serving high tech industries with strategic planning services to diversify into non-defense areas. One of my clients hired me as the marketing member of a turn-around team and I hired a smart young Persian MBA who became a life-long friend Mark Amin involved me in his business ventures which took us into the motion picture field which proved beneficial to my family. I continued my engineering ventures in energy conservation. Living in Malibu turned me into somewhat of an environmentalist with practical ways of diminishing man´s footprints on mother earth. I began writing novels in the late 1990's based on my life's experiences. Love in the shadows of Apartheid Sharon Inge Die for me Argentina Sex & Love Trilogy Life in the Fast Lane of Championship Horse Shows-In Blind Faith Book 1 and 2 The Foster Care Dilemma, a series of editions exposing the dreadful problems afflicting foster children in our modern world today.