A dream as big as Texas

the long version

The ground shook violently, and when the earthquake stopped, seventeen year-old Malley Caldwell's life changed forever. With her mother gone, an apparently parentless young girl leaves the migrant worker's life of California to go to Texas with her dear family friend, Rio and her pup, Scrapper. On a ranch in the Texas Hill Country, Malley discovers a secret past between Rio and the Donovans that threatens her newly-found happiness with ranch family she has grown close to. When family ties take her to England, Malley encounters a life-style so different from any she has ever known; and while she finds the family she always longed for, her heart remains on the ranch in the Texas Hill Country where the spring days are filled with the beauty of bluebonnets and night skies are full of stars. And always, there is the memory of Shawn Donovan.