The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

A lush, sexy, evocative debut novel of family secrets and girls’-school rituals, set in the 1930s South

It is 1930, the midst of the Great Depression. After her mysterious role in a family tragedy, passionate, strong-willed Thea Atwell, age fifteen, has been cast out of her Florida home, exiled to an equestrienne boarding school for Southern debutantes. High in the Blue Ridge Mountains, with its complex social strata ordered by money, beauty, and girls’ friendships, the Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls is a far remove from the free-roaming, dreamlike childhood Thea shared with her twin brother on their family’s citrus farm—a world now partially shattered. As Thea grapples with her responsibility for the events of the past year that led her here, she finds herself enmeshed in a new order, one that will change her sense of what is possible for herself, her family, her country.

Weaving provocatively between home and school, the narrative powerfully unfurls the true story behind Thea’s expulsion from her family, but it isn’t long before the mystery of her past is rivaled by the question of how it will shape her future. Part scandalous love story, part heartbreaking family drama, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls is an immersive, transporting page-turner—a vivid, propulsive novel about sex, love, family, money, class, home, and horses, all set against the ominous threat of the Depression—and the major debut of an important new writer.

What Others Are Saying About
The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

“What makes Yonahlossee emotionally engaging in its own right—this summer’s first romantic page turner—is Ms. DiSclafani’s sure-footed sense of narrative and place, and her decision to portray her heroine, Thea Atwell, in all her complexity: fierce, passionate, strong-willed, but also selfish, judgmental and self-destructive. . . . By cutting back and forth between the events that took Thea to Yonahlossee and her experiences in school, Ms. DiSclafani methodically builds suspense, making the reader wonder how Thea’s two romances will unfurl, and whether they will dovetail or collide. . . .  The reader’s attention rarely wavers, thanks to Ms. DiSclafani’s knowledge of how to keep her foot on her story’s gas pedal, and her sympathy for her spirited, unbridled heroine.”

– Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls is no one-trick phony. Even as Thea keeps wetting her lips to tell us the unspeakable truth, we’re lured into more complex and provocative aspects of her story. . . . The novel’s most daring aspect [is] its winding exploration of adolescent sexuality. . . . DiSclafani is a crafty mistress of . . . pious conventions.”

– The Washington Post

“DiSclafani is an insanely talented writer—her precise period details and lovely descriptions of riding and adolescence have a spellbinding effect.”

– Entertainment Weekly

“DiSclafani’s writing is smart and sexy, and her characters are flawed and worth knowing as they navigate through life and don’t always make the wisest decisions.”

– NPR

“Sparkling . . . DiSclafani’s transporting prose recalls that uneasy time at the brink of adulthood, and reminds us that even the most protective parents can’t keep the world at bay.”

– O, the Oprah Magazine

“A captivating story of shame, blame and family secrets.”

– USA Today

“Compelling debut.”

– People

“Anton DiSclafani’s debut novel, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, is a painstakingly constructed ode to a young girl’s sexual awakening. This is perhaps one of the classier books a young teen would hide under her covers to read with a flashlight.”

– NPR.org

“I fell completely under the spell of Anton DiSclafani’s amazing first novel and was gripped by its lush and dreamy evocations of Southern decorum, family secrets, and boarding school rituals. DiSclafani is wildly talented, and this is a sexy, suspenseful, gorgeously written book.”

– Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Prep

“The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls is so sexy, smart, and vividly drawn that I was surprised to remember that this novel is Anton DiSclafani’s first. With such a big-hearted and atmospheric book, Ms. DiSclafani’s talents should be celebrated far and wide.”

– Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies