" In the Heart of a Mustang is one of the finest books ever written for teens and preteens." Literary Classics. In the Heart of a Mustang has been selected as the 2016 Gold Medal winner of the Literary Classics award for Young Adult General Fiction and is a Silver Medal Award Winner from the Nautilus Book Awards. In the Heart of a Mustang has also been awarded the 2017 Silver Medal from the Readers Favorite International Book Awards for Young Adult Fiction. A boy is told that his father was a brave and virtuous man, a soldier who traded his life to save the lives of countless others. He was the man that Hunter needed to emulate. The only problem is the whole story is a lie, all of it. The truth, which Hunter discovers as he begins his sophomore year of high school, is that his father has actually spent the boy's entire life in jail, paying his debt to society, but not mending his ways. A wild mustang mare, is rounded up by the BLM. The spring rains had been sparse, the forage on the plains even more so. The mare and her herd are rescued from certain starvation and placed for adoption. In a sandy corral at Promise Ranch, a home for troubled teenage boys, the boy and the mare meet. A weathered, old cowboy brings them together - a mentor for one, a trainer for the other. The bond that forms between boy and horse becomes one that saves the lives of both.