Taming The Star Runner

"Not my uncle, man, I'm scared of the plane. I'm scared to get on the goddamn plane..."
"You ain't scared."
Travis slumped back against the wall and met Joe' eyes for a second. Joe was appalled. Travis Harris, the coolest, the toughest...
"Remember that drag race we had with those guys from Central?" Joe asked.
Of course, Travis remembered it clearly. They were in the twins' Trans Am and Travis was driving. He was the only person they let drive their car. He was doing 110 on the expressway and he took one hand off the wheel to take Kirk's beer and slug it down. his other arm trembling with the effort of driving, and everyone was holding his breath. He hit 115 and nobody was breathing at all, he asked for another and Billy, - maybe Mike - gave him one quickly, afraid he'd turn around and take it. They were flying, skimming the road, the central guys left behind long ago, and nobody, man, nobody thought he'd get the car back down. He just kept asking for more, faster, harder, they couldn't even hear the radio anymore or see the lights rushing by in the night, as if they were all suspended in time, nothing real except the lights on the dashboard where the needle kept climbing...
"Remember that, Trav? You can't be scared."
Travis stared down at his boots. "I was driving."

Synopsis

Travis is the epitome of cool, even when he's in trouble. But when he's sent to stay with his uncle on a ranch in the country, he finds that his schoolmates don't like his tough city ways.

He does find friendship of a sort with Casey, who runs a riding school at the ranch. She's the bravest person Travis has ever met, and crazy enough to try to tame the Star Runner, her beautiful, dangerous horse who's always on edge, about to explode. It's clear to Travis that he and the Star Runner are two of a kind, creatures not meant to be tamed.

S. E. Hinton on the book

Taming The Star-Runner is a horse story, a love story, and a story of the different forms art can take.

And some of the things that happen to Travis, who wrote his first book at sixteen, happened to me.

But not all, Thank God.