Seventy-Something Acres is a rip-roaring humdinger of a book, zigzagging between New Zealand and the United States. As the author struggles to turn this long abandoned land into a real working farm, the book lurches from crisis to crisis. Somehow most are resolved although the cast of extraordinary people, horses and other animals continues to produce continuing predicaments.
Elizabeth Benney - 'Call me Liz'- grew up in New Plymouth and in girlhood became obsessed with horses. Her vision of a horse farm, however, wasn't just the usual romantic dream. She became a top rider, going on to the both clompetitors and judge in the US when she and her New Zealand husband - 'my Rock of Gilbraltar' - went to live in Massachusetts.
It's a book full of horse lore and sound horse sense but it is much more than that. Wide-ranging and with surprising insights into people and places including China and the remote back-country of New Zealand, it is a heartening story of courage, enterprise and the will to win through