Ranch of Dreams: The Heartwarming Story of America's Most Unusual Animal Sanctuary ANNOTATION
Cleveland Amory shares his collection of stories of rescued animals.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
After reading Black Beauty as a child, Cleveland Amory dreamed that some day he would have a ranch where animals would not be abused, but instead would, like the famous horse, end their days roaming proud and free. Many people know that Amory has worked tirelessly for decades on behalf of animals: the founder of the Fund for Animals in 1967, he first confessed to being adopted by a stray cat himself in The Cat who Came for Christmas, the best-selling cat book of all time. But few know that Amory did in fact realize his childhood ambition by establishing the Black Beauty Ranch in East Texas. Now he shares, in his all-but-patented combination of humor and warmth, the remarkable stories of these rescuees.
SYNOPSIS
From the author of The Cat who Came for Christmas comes the remarkable stories of the animals that have been saved at Amory's Black Beauty Ranch in East Texas.
FROM THE CRITICS
San Francisco Chronicle
One of the best books of the year.
Publishers Weekly
Tucked away in the rolling country of east Texas is Black Beauty Ranch, home to unwanted, mistreated or abandoned animals. Amory (The Cat Who Came for Christmas) realized a childhood dream when he established the animal haven in 1980. Here, he gives an engaging account of the many creatures who have found refuge there, among them Nim, the famous "talking" chimpanzee-he has an extraordinary facility with sign language-rescued from a laboratory. There are also dogs, cats, horses, elephants and prairie dogs. Amory, founder of the Fund for Animals, recounts some of his (and the Fund's) battles with government agencies, including: rescuing goats on San Clemente Island (taking on the navy), burros in the Grand Canyon (the Park Service) and wild horses in Nevada (the Bureau of Land Management). Amory also takes corporate titans like Ted Turner and Malcolm Forbes and organizations such as the San Diego Zoo to task for their poor treatment of animals. Amory's stories will captivate any animal lover, and readers will be delighted to learn that the ranch welcomes visitors.
Library Journal
Amory does more than adopt stray cats (see The Cat Who Came for Christmas); he has an entire ranch where abused or threatened animals find a haven.
Orlando Sentinel
The stories entrance, and the pictures captivate. . . .Cleveland Amory is at it again.
Kirkus Reviews
Cruelty is disgusting, and Amory (The Best Cat Ever) paints it just so in this story of the haven he helped create for animals suffering from every rank and radius of human abuse. By now Amory is perhaps better known for his advocacy of the decent treatment of animals than for his reviews in TV Guide, and his ranch in east Texas—Black Beauty Ranch, after the book chronicling the frightful abuse of the eponymous horse—is gaining a like reputation. There, animals are allowed to do as they please in a place they feel belongs to them (though ranch hands keep a weather eye out for them). Here Amory tells the stories of various animals and how they made their way to Black Beauty; the tales are by and large horrific, though most have happy endings. Amory is a wry companion whose aristocratic humor sparkles with a biting contempt for all those who would do harm to animals, from the US Navy, which allowed rare Andalusian goats to be shot for sport on one of its shelling ranges, to the National Park Service, with its cruel treatment of burros and buffalo, and the Bureau of Land Management, equally guilty in its handling of wild horses. He also gets in good clean digs at the much-heralded San Diego Zoo, where elephants are splayed and soundly beaten with ax handles if they prove too spunky. Not all is anecdotal as Amory includes an intelligent history of the horse, an explanation of brucellosis and how it relates to the shooting of buffalo that wander out of Yellowstone Park, and additional background information that makes supposedly "humane" extermination of animals look barbaric.
Amory's simple point—that our treatment of animals should be governed by the rules of common decency and respect—is stated convincingly, with brio and great dignity.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
A delightful story with a hundred happy endings. — Paul Harvey
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