I don't have the book to hand (it isn't all THAT good a book - for a good horse story I'd rather read Donn Byrne), but I don't remember a rodeo scene - part of the ambience of the book was the kid's isolation on a remote ranch with his cowboy father, sympathetic but ineffective mother, and an older brother who does everything right. But there was a scene where Flicka's mother (a black mare whose name I don't remember - but a bad actor and outlaw that nobody could tame) rears up in the cattle truck as it goes under the ranch gate and knocks her brains out. The boy is of course horrified by this (and the cowboys naturally don't comprehend that).
I'm sure the rodeo scene is more of the kid's horrified reaction to cruelty and violence.
Exactly! I was reading (or rather going through) Ferber's Giant --- same thing. Sensitive kid who abhors all the evil ranch violence, son of heavy-handed rancher, sensitive eastern mother...groan.
"I don't have the book to hand (it isn't all THAT good a book - for a good horse story I'd rather read Donn Byrne), but I don't remember a rodeo scene - part of the ambience of the book was the kid's isolation on a remote ranch with his cowboy father, sympathetic but ineffective mother, and an older brother who does everything right. But there was a scene where Flicka's mother (a black mare whose name I don't remember - but a bad actor and outlaw that nobody could tame) rears up in the cattle truck as it goes under the ranch gate and knocks her brains out. The boy is of course horrified by this (and the cowboys naturally don't comprehend that)."
You know what else that sounds like? The Red Pony by John Steinbeck.
I'll take Walter Farley! Gawd, that match race with Cyclone and Sun Raider still gives me chills.