Acknowledgements

A very special thank-you to Janet Gardner and her gorgeous warmblood, Prime Suspect, for inviting me to The Dressage Center to view a competition. Although I changed a few details, I used this beautiful center in the heart of Moorpark’s horse country as the setting for my story.

Also, thank you to Steve Kipper and Vladimer Tom Valter at the Jdon Andalusian Farms in Somis, California, for answering every question I could think of, and then some. The weather and the scenery couldn’t have been more perfect.

The story of Alois Podhajsky’s valiant rescue of the Lipizzan stallions with the help of the United States Army’s 2nd Cavalry, under orders from General George S. Patton and carried out under the direct command of Colonel Charles H. Reed, is well- documented, so much so that Walt Disney was inspired to make a movie of the subject. These are truly gallant horses. That part is fact.

The fiction begins with Franz Kohnle bringing a strain of Lipizzaners to America, and with the hypothetical Navicular Disease. The man never existed and the disease has never, as far as I know, afflicted any of the Spanish Riding School’s famous Lipizzaners.

As always, my appreciation for my agent, Loretta Barrett, at Barrett Books grows with every book.