The two timelines in this women’s fiction tale are both now history, 1972 and 1778. They are linked by Nova Scotia, in Canada, where two women are fated to travel. THE LONELINESS OF HORSES is an interesting look at colonialisation.
 
In Northern Arizona, Evie Parker was abandoned by her husband while pregnant. She’s now nineteen with an eighteen-month-old boy, Christopher, who is the light of her meagre life. Afraid that her ex – who has divorced her and got a new girlfriend – will try to take her son, she’s living in hiding outside Flagstaff. A wandering mustang mare, escaped from a cruel roundup, comes seeking water. Christopher promptly names her Horsie. A sucker for an animal in trouble, Evie will shortly also have a second mustang and a stolen lamb. I kept wishing she would stand up for herself, but she doesn’t come from a supportive family so maybe she never learned. The 1970s put women and girls in the back of the queue.   
 
New Scotland – a British colony on the Canadian shores – sends a young man to the old country seeking a suitable bride. Belle MacLeod is the younger sister and Kathleen should marry first, but John Ross, a governor, wants to buy good horses as well as a wife. The Laird MacLeod will add some of his horses to the dowry. Belle sees her chance to escape the Highland Clearances, and substitutes herself on the boat passage, with her two fine horses Prince and Queenie. Her father will never forgive her, but John Ross doesn’t have much option.
 
Nova Scotia is where Evie ends up, still hiding, along with several men who are evading the Vietnam War. I have to say some parts of this were slow going, as I kept waiting for Jesse Parker to reappear in Evie’s life – and waiting – or for Canadian officialdom to request for Christopher to attend a doctor and school. Nothing seemed to happen except as suited the strange men, who mostly wanted women to be unpaid workers. In the past of the area, Belle Ross discovers that her people had ousted the French settlers, who had ousted the Indigenous people of the area. She’s greatly discomfited but hasn’t any power.
 
While the landscapes are well described, and we get a good sense of the eras, the final chapters introduce a new set of characters in 1998 far too late for us to care about them. Andrea Thalasinos seems to have tried to force a connection between the times, but THE LONELINESS OF HORSES would have worked better with a final brief catch-up, I think. I sympathise with the hunted mustangs, which might be an allegory for the people brutalised by colonial powers. This is a book for adult readers who like a story that reflects on the circular nature of history.