The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls is a new kind of classic
The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton Disclafani (Penguin) A pleasure of The Yonahlosee Riding Camp for Girls is the incredibly astute and almost painfully ironic perceptions of the fifteen-year-old narrator, Thea Altwell. She's entering exile, at the beginning of the novel, as her father drives her from the moist wilds of Florida to the dry mountains of North Carolina. Thea mourns her home and dreads the unknown Camp. Emotionally, she's a mess, filled with guilt and shame. All she knows is her childhood with her happy family in their beautiful home is gone and it’s her fault. She's being punished, her mother's angry and disappointed that Thea's not a "right" girl. She doesn’t believe her father will leave her, until he does. Then she's profoundly alone in a cabin with strange girls. Thea has never before left her insular world in rural Florida. She and her beloved twin brother, Sam, were even tutored at home by their father. While ...