Tevis, From the Back of My Horse

Sharma was three years old when she rode a horse for the first time. It stirred something deep within her genetics, and her destiny was sealed. Her father had been a jockey at the famous Pimlico racetrack in Maryland before WWII, and her mother had ridden since childhood. During recesses in elementary school, Sharma and her friends would act out horse stories they had read, trotting and galloping around the playground as they pretended to be their favorite horse characters. By the time Sharma was in junior high school, she was mucking stalls and cleaning tack in the neighborhood public riding stable in order to get a “free” hour ride at the end of the day. Sharma’s passion for horses never wavered even though it was interrupted with undergraduate and graduate studies and two separate careers, the first for six years as a teacher in Junior High and High School science, math, chemistry, biology, gymnastics coach and part-time university professor in botany and biology; and the second as a stratigraphic palynologist and international oil exploration geologist for Chevron Corporation for nearly 30 years. Sharma is now in her third career as an author, living with all her furry, feathered and finned friends on a beautiful ranch in Grass Valley, California.