On Cloudy Mountain — Lyman Hafen

As summer approaches, 12-year-old Damon McIntyre braces for the torture of another season playing baseball and another hopeless attempt at being the boy his mother's boyfriend expects him be. All he really wants is to hole up in his bedroom in a Boston suburb and ride out the summer with his computer games. But after a cryptic letter from Nevada arrives, he finds himself on an airplane following the ghostly image of a white horse into the west.

On his grandparent's ranch at the foot of a mysterious mountain, Damon is reluctantly enmeshed with a host of characters, including his cowgirl aunt, his quirky cousin Corky, his wise and compassionate grandmother, his ancient grandfather who cannot speak, a native Paiute ranch-hand and his beguiling 12-year-old daughter, and an enigmatic older cousin named Lucas.

During the course of the summer he not only discovers the gifts that made his father legendary, he unwittingly becomes entangled in the family politics of what will become of the ranch. He learns to ride, rope, and chase wild horses, and comes face-to-face with a real life that eclipses the virtual one he left back home. Under the spell of the haunting drone of bagpipes, he searches summer-long for his father, who, along with a majestic grey stallion, disappeared on Cloudy Mountain years earlier. As the story of his father comes to light, Damon discovers who he truly is.

As much a story of the complicated world of adults as it is the coming of age for a boy, On Cloudy Mountain is a book for all ages.