Where the Blind Horse Sings

April 30, 2007
Giving up a thriving 11-year teaching career, Stevens bought a disastrously rundown farm on a vast number of acres, and with sheer determination, boundless compassion and limited funds turned it into an acclaimed haven for abused livestock, the Catskills Animal Sanctuary. In her first book, Stevens, though she humbly claims "our job was to love and nurture them without expectation," presents the heartening story of the difficult work that has gone into saving more than 1,100 lives since the sanctuary's 2001 founding. The blind horse of the title appears among an eclectic company of pigs, sheep, cows, ducks and other animals with improbably Broadway-sized personalities-personalities revealed as the bond between people and animals strengthens, and the distinctions between them narrow. The anecdotes are fascinating, sometimes miraculous, and their power is undeniable: "I would not have believed that a rooster would so crave physical closeness that he'd demand to get in bed with me or that as he was dying, a gentle old steer named Samson would lick my face over and over until he took his last breath. But this stuff happens all the time." Though sentimentality in this case is de rigeur (how could a book about love for animals avoid it?), the ideas behind Stevens's stories-such as the inherent equality and nobility of all species-are affecting and thought-provoking.