The Journey

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Colorado author, Lou Dean, completed a 31-day, 400-mile ride across the state on May 21, 2001. She left her home on Blue Mountain, near the Utah/Colorado border.

Retired teacher, Jean E. Smith riding her Arabian, Tut, accompanied Lou Dean. Along the way, the pair stopped at schools, libraries and bookstores to speak to kids about non-violence and donate copies of Lou Dean’s novel, Reaching for the Reins.

The night before Lou Dean finished the journey into Holyoke, she learned that her novel had just won the Colorado Author’s League 2001 TOP HAND AWARD for young adult fiction.

In 2004 Lou Dean’s story about the ride became part of the woman’s anthology Crazy Woman Creek/Women Rewrite the American West published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

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