Mandy Retzlaff is a lifelong horse lover and farmer. Today, Mandy and her husband, Pat Retzlaff, run a horse safari company on the Mozambique coast, taking tourists on rides through the wild and wonderful country that they now call home.
One Hundred and Four Horses: A Memoir of Farm and Family, Africa and Exile
Paperback
$15.99
- ISBN-13: 9780062204394
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
- Publication date: 11/18/2014
- Pages: 288
- Product dimensions: 5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.68(d)
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Pat and Mandy Retzlaff enjoyed a hard but satisfying farming life in Zimbabwe. After their children, the couple's true pride and joy were their horses. But in early 2001, their lives were thrown into turmoil when armed members of President Robert Mugabe's War Veterans' Association began violently reclaiming farmlands owned by white Zimbabweans. Under the threat of death, they were forced to flee.
As families across the country abandoned their land, they left behind dozens of horses. Devoted animal lovers, Pat and Mandy—virtually homeless themselves—vowed to save these beautiful animals, risking their lives to bring them to safety: Shere Khan, the queen of the herd; Tequila, the escape artist forever trying to walk back to his original home; Grey, the silver gelding and leader; Princess, the temperamental mare; and the numerous others they rescued along the way.
One Hundred and Four Horses recounts their unforgettable journey and the remarkable horses they protected. It is a love story and an epic tale of survival and unbreakable bonds—those that hold us to land and family, but also those between man and the most majestic of animals, the horse.
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Lawrence Scanlan
After reading One Hundred and Four Horses, the phrases “horse rescue” and “let’s make a plan” have new meaning. This is a compelling, touching and sometimes grisly account, and to read it is to understand in a new way the power of the horse-human bond.Conor Grennan
One Hundred and Four Horses is a breathless adventure . . . an incredible story of a family that decided the lives of the animals they loved was worth risking their own. . . . You will mourn and celebrate with [Retzlaff] at every step along the way.Daily Mail (London)
Dramatic, emotionally charged.The Times (London)
The dramatic narrative of their dangerous journey… gives this epic its nail-biting edge. The horses, each with its own character, are the stars.Kirkus Reviews
2013-10-01A moving account of one family's determination to save abandoned horses, despite the dangerous war that surrounded them. "I remember a place that was wild and filled with game…where our horses grazed contently and waited to be ridden along dusty red tracks that wound their way into the bush," writes Retzlaff in her heartwarming memoir of life with her family in war-torn Zimbabwe. She and her husband were living their dream; they had an idyllic farm where they pushed back the bush to grow tobacco and tomatoes, raised their children and rode beautiful horses, "a place in which we wanted to invest the whole of our lives…a place for the generations to come." Then, nearly a decade later, Robert Mugabe and his armed "war veterans" violently began reclaiming the land from the Retzlaffs and their white farmer neighbors. What followed is a horrific account of survival, not only of the author's family, but of their beloved family horses and the horses abandoned by their friends as they fled the country. Homeless, the couple risked their lives to save as many horses as they could, hiding them in barns surrounded by aggressive and armed men who thought nothing of killing the beloved animals. When even that became too dangerous, the Retzlaffs, along with over 100 horses, fled Zimbabwe for nearby Mozambique, where disaster followed them once again. Retzlaff provides readers with an intimate look at the personalities of these animals, as well as the physical and spiritual connections between each horse and rider. Intertwined with this love of animals, the author offers a behind-the-headlines view of the Zimbabwean struggle, which accentuates the true gruesomeness and folly of war. A poetic memoir for horse lovers and those interested in stories of triumph over adversity.