My Grandfather's Horses

Within a desert landscape lies a mystery of a cursed past, a young man's destiny, and a beautiful ghost horse.


On the Punta Prieta coastline, along the blue waters of the Sea of Cortez, there is a centuries-old legend of a Spanish nobleman whose ship ran aground. In a mutiny by the impoverished crew, he and his prized possession, a beautiful, fiery Azulejo horse, are brutally murdered. Yet before the nobleman draws his last breath, a curse sounds forth from his dying lips that will echo throughout the generations...
As a young man, Donato Perry comes to live with his great-great-grandfather, Don Tomas, on his desert ranch in Baja, Mexico. It is there that he learns to become a seasoned vaquero and seeks to capture a wid azulejo horse, the only horse, it is said, of its kind. But when Donato becomes heir to a precious treasure, he finds himself caught in the curse that must finally be played out and a love that must be won.

When author Victoria Auberon was four, her father, a British explorer, took her to live in Baja, California. Many of the characters in My Grandfather's Horses are based upon real animals she knew in her childhood. From age thirteen to fifteen, Daphne spent three years handling horses on the uninhabited island of Cerralvo, in the Sea of Cortez. As an adult, Daphne has managed horse farms in several states as well as having owned, bred, and trained her own Arabian Horses in the USA.