Turning on a Dime By Maggie Dana

Interesting combination - horses, time travel and the Civil War. The story is told alternately by two teenage girls who love horses - Samantha, a present day girl whose goal is to be the first African American girl to ride in the Olympics, and Caroline, who lives on a plantation in Mississippi in 1863 where her father breeds horses. Caroline is a tomboy and gets in trouble frequently for not acting ladylike enough and for riding horses in her brother's breeches and getting dirty. When Samantha, whose mother is black and father is white, accidentally travels through time and winds up in Caroline's room, she learns what life was like during the Civil War for black people. She and Caroline become friends and together they try to save Caroline's horse as the Civil War encroaches upon them. The story is fun and intriguing although I think that some of the time elements are a bit off - for example, would someone during the Civil War era have named a fast horse Meteor? All in all though, the book is a fun read for girls who like horses and it features spunky girls and the time travel twist is fun if not realistic. I received this book free to review from Netgalley.