One Hundred and Four Horses

The memoir One Hundred and Four Horses is “an incredible story of a family that decided the lives of the animals they loved was worth risking their own.”*

Pat and Mandy Retzlaff enjoyed a hard but satisfying farming life in Zimbabwe. After their children, the couple’s true pride and joy were their horses. But in early 2001, their lives were thrown into turmoil when armed members of President Robert Mugabe’s War Veterans’ Association began violently reclaiming farmlands owned by white Zimbabweans. Under the threat of death, they were forced to flee.

As families across the country abandoned their land, they left behind dozens of horses. Devoted animal lovers, Pat and Mandy—virtually homeless themselves—vowed to save these beautiful animals, risking their lives to bring them to safety: Shere Khan, the queen of the herd; Tequila, the escape artist forever trying to walk back to his original home; Grey, the silver gelding and leader; Princess, the temperamental mare; and the numerous others they rescued along the way.

One Hundred and Four Horses recounts their unforgettable journey and the remarkable horses they protected. It is a love story and an epic tale of survival and unbreakable bonds—those that hold us to land and family, but also those between man and the most majestic of animals, the horse.

“A breathless adventure . . . You will mourn and celebrate with [Retzlaff] at every step along the way.” —*New York Times bestselling author Conor Grennan

“A compelling, touching and sometimes grisly account, and to read it is to understand in a new way the power of the horse-human bond.” —Lawrence Scanlan, author of Wild About Horses