The Mare

Velveteen Vargas is an eleven-year-old from Brooklyn who is granted a summer vacation in the country, courtesy of the nonprofit Fresh Air Fund. Her host family is a couple in upstate New Ginger, an alcoholic artist, and Paul, an academic who wonders what it will mean to ''make a difference'' in such a contrived situation. We see the couple's changing relationship with Velvet over the course of several years, as well as Velvet's powerful encounter with the horses at the stable down the road -- a weaving together of Velvet's vital inner-city community and the privileged country world of Ginger and Paul.