![]() “Linkletter,” writes the author, “immediately understood Annie’s essential Americanness: her authority came precisely from the fact that her journey was neither choreographed nor staged. In 1955, she appeared on Art Linkletter's popular TV show People Are Funny. Newspaper reporters transformed her into a celebrity whose story brightened the lives of Americans living through the nightmare of the McCarthy era and earned her the gift of a companion horse for Tarzan named Rex from a small Tennessee community. After her uncle died and she received her grim prognosis, which rendered her unable to look after the farm, she decided to live out a childhood dream to “see the Pacific Ocean at least once in my life.” She used most of the money she got from selling the family farm to buy Tarzan, a horse destined for the slaughterhouse, and set out for California, leading her beloved small mutt, Depeche Toi, on a clothesline leash. ![]() ![]() In the small town of Minot, Wilkins had lived in poverty on the family farm, with no electricity or running water. In 1954, after being diagnosed with terminal tuberculosis, the 63-year-old Mainer "took her dog and got on a horse" and rode all the way to California. ![]() Letts narrates the tale of Annie Wilkins. The bestselling author of The Eighty-Dollar Champion and The Perfect Horse returns with another uplifting story of horses and determination. ![]()
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