Rock Solid

When horse-savvy James is hired by the Duke of Dorchester to deliver a young Arab stallion to the colony of Newfoundland aboard the Hindsight in the year 1800, James and the duke's beautiful daughter, Alicia, realize this is a perfect opportunity for them both to board the ship and escape to the New World. They would cross the sea, deliver the young horse to a Mr. Penney who lived on Bell Island, and then they would be free to live their lives as husband and wife. Nothing could stop them, so they thought.

Then it happened. The Hindsight could not withstand a sudden Atlantic storm that arose near the Newfoundland coastline. Yet James and Alicia are not defeated, even as the ship founders, they tie themselves to each other with horse leads and then to the young stallion. Even as they hear frantic cries as the Hindsight slides below the waves - the powerful stallion - bred to withstand any challenge surges onward and away to an unknown shore.

Alicia gives in to the ice-cold sea. James catches sight of a single light, flickering in the distance, and with that the young black stallion senses shore - and is able to scramble up on a rocky beach. Out of the darkness come two Newfoundlanders. Knowing the secrets of how to outsmart Poseidon's deadly hand, Ted and Marion Martin, true Newfoundlanders, get to work to save Alicia.

Equally important and pivotal to the entire saga is the lonely Mr. Robert Penney. Overwhelmed with joy when James delivers the young stallion to his doorstep, Mr. Penney offers James, Alicia and their two Newfoundland friends an opportunity that sweeps the reader through the next fifty years of true-to-life Newfoundland's rich history.