Abby Lovitt doesn't realize how unprepared she is when she takes her beloved horse, True Blue, to a clinic led by the most famous equestrian anyone knows. The biggest surprise, though, is that Sophia, the girl who never makes a mistake, suddenly makes so many that she stops riding. Who will ride her horse? Abby's dad seems to think it will be Abby. Pie in the Sky is the most expensive horse Abby has ever ridden. But he is proud and irritable, and he takes Abby's attention away from the continuing mystery that is True Blue. And then there's high school. Abby finds new friends, but also new challenges, and a larger world that sometimes seems strange and intimidating. She begins to wonder if there is another way to look at horses, people, and life itself.

When Abby Lovitt gets to work at her family's ranch, she can hardly believe her luck. True Blue is a beauty, a dapple grey, and he needs a new home — his owner was tragically killed in a car crash, and no one has claimed him. Her father is wary, as always. But Abby is smitten. True Blue is a sweetheart, and whenever Abby calls out, Blue, Blue, how are you? he whinnies back. But sometimes True Blue seems, well... spooked. He paces, and always seems to be looking for something. Or someone. Abby starts to wonder about True Blue's owner. What was she like? What did she look like? And what are the strange whispers Abby sometimes hears when she's with him?

Abby Lovitt has always been more at ease with horses than with people. Her father insists they call all the mares 'Jewel' and all the geldings 'George' and warns Abby not to get attached: the horses are there to be sold. But with all the stress at school (the Big Four have turned against Abby and her friends) and home (her brother Danny is gone — for good, it seems — and now Daddy won't speak his name), Abby seeks refuge with the Georges and the Jewels. But there's one gelding on her family's farm that gives her no end of trouble: the horse who won't meet her gaze, the horse who bucks her right off every chance he gets, the horse her father makes her ride and train, every day. She calls him the Ornery George.