Sky Rider Author:Nancy Springer Dusty always jokes when life gets to be not funny at all. But the night before the vet comes to put down ailing Tazz, her thoroughbred, all Dusty feels is pain. Pain in her heart, and pain in her spine--injured in a drunk-driving accident after her mother's sudden death. The drunk at the wheel was her own grieving father, and now, though he i... more »s sober, Dusty's back is in a brace and, like Tazz, she hurts all the time. Sometime before dawn, an eerily beautiful stranger appears in the barn doorway and offers to take Tazz away with him. Away where? Dusty wonders, but Tazz trusts the boy. Dusty's beloved horse seems healed, willing to leap right over the sun, to run, fly, and so she lets him go. Dusty doesn't think much about it when she learns at school that a student named Skye Ryder was accidentally killed on his dirt bike. But she finds out where he was killed (on her father's property) and how (by a cable strung across the trail). Then Dusty sees a picture of Skye in the newspaper (very much resembling her horse's otherworldly new owner). And her father begins drinking again. It isn't long before Skye returns. Part angel, part vengeful ghost, he will never know peace unless Dusty can help him seek the justice he deserves, even if it means alienating the only person Dusty has left.« less