BookReviews

Reviews

Loving Larry is a riveting page-turner that reads like a good novel. Penny Wormet has written an honest, heart-wrenching and ultimately uplifting story of Elaine Hall’s struggle to hold her family and life together in the face of her husband Larry’s severe bipolar disease and eventual death. Deftly woven through Wormet’s narrative is the story of Larry Hall Cutting Horses, home of some of the foremost performance horses in the world.

Saddle up for a great ride!
~Sally Harrison, Author/Editor

In splendid fashion, two lifelong friends have united to capture the trials and tribulations of an extraordinary person. From beginning to end, this touching saga of a beautiful woman, her family, and her horses, warms the heart and touches the soul. In unabridged detail, we relive a chronicled life of humble beginnings to one of enviable heights, yet riddled with adversity…a sobering reminder that the gift of life on Earth is laced with tragedy and heartache. Skillfully intertwined in this account is an engaging look at the horses, people, and pulse of the National Cutting Horse Association.

Fueled by an unerring faith in our Lord and empowered by an unrelenting philanthropic thirst, we gain a vivid appreciation of one woman’s yearning to maintain a happy and wholesome family setting, to strive for success in a male-dominated cutting horse industry, and to attend to those less fortunate.

This autobiographical account is written as a tribute to a loving and gifted husband and father inconceivably afflicted with mental illness, and of a fabled genetic line of cutting horse. I close the book realizing that the unheralded figure is usually adorned in pink….the woman behind the man and the horse. Both within and outside the chapters of this reading, I have been touched deeply by the horse, Peptoboonsmal, and by the woman that named him. I am ever so grateful that both have entered my life.

Dickson D. Varner, DVM, MS, Diplomat ACT

Professor and Chief of Theriogenology

Pin Oak Stud Chair of Stallion Reproductive Studies

Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences

College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences

Texas A&M University

A “Boon” to history’s biographical works! Loving Larry is truly a brilliant literary accomplishment. This collaboration of life-long friends has produced an unprecedented masterpiece. Mrs. Hall, who’s life-story reflects a selfless, prayerful, and relentless business-woman’s pursuit of God’s Will, is an inspiration to those who are without hope and are challenged with life’s roadblocks and tragedies. Mrs. Wormet, a first-time author, has risen to the challenge and succeeded with flying colors. After reading throughout the night I found it inconceivable that I should put the book down until I had finished it. Imagine my astonishment upon learning, post hoc, that this work was Mrs. Wormet’s first major literary endeavor. A heroic and humbling read, Loving Larry has Best Seller written all over it.

~Devin Hayes
Business Owner/Consultant/Marine Biologist

"This is an amazing and moving book, a true-to-life account of faith triumphant over the most severe affliction and pressure. The testimony to the power of God and the eternal love of Jesus Christ is unmistakable. Penny's skillful and sensitive narrative will draw you in and hold you spellbound with anticipation, to the very last page. You will care for the people here. You will experience the full spectrum of their emotions in a way few authors can manage to convey, and you will watch in awe as the loving providence of God unfolds around and through Elaine Hall."

~Pastor John R. Krebs

If you even think you might know someone who is bipolar, then Loving Larry is a definite read for you. Written by Penny Wormet as told to her by Elaine Hall, the wife of Larry Hall, it is a first-hand account of the life of the late Larry Hall who suffered from bipolar disease.

More descriptive than any words a doctor can offer and more explanatory that any textbook can impart, the 374-page story provides an insightful glimpse into the inner working of the bipolar mind. You walk with Elaine as she lives through Larry’s triumphs of building an equine empire, and you struggle with her through his tragedies, including the inability to live to experience his empire’s fulfillment.

While bipolar awareness is a major theme, it is only a part of the education Loving Larry offers. If you think you might like first-hand knowledge about an individual’s walk with God, then again, this is a definite read for you. Elaine pulls no punches as she describes how her faith sustained her during Larry’s tragic life, and then continued to sustain her as she strived to carry on his equine business through their stallion Peptoboonsmal.

Still, there is more here than Elaine’s straightforward insight into the often unmentionable bipolar disease and the often controversial subject of religion. The book is in reality, her love story, both for her husband and for their stallion, and that is what wraps and cushions the devastating blows of bipolar while enlightening the strengths of religion.

Loving Larry will leave you thinking. You’ll think about the difficulty of an illness, perhaps dream about the excitement of owning a great horse, maybe even question your own mortality. One thing for sure, though, it will leave you thinking.

~Gala Nettles
Free Lance Writer and Columnist

If you're in the cutting horse business and you're familiar with Peptoboonsmal, one of the leading sires in the industry, this book is a must to read. A true story that reads like a suspense novel, Loving Larry is a story about Larry and Elaine Hall and Larry's innate ability to buy and breed great cutting horses. Life turned tragic when Larry was diagnosed with bipolar disease and eventually died. While most people in the industry had never met Elaine, as she played a very silent role in the industry, she took Larry's dreams of owning a super horse and made them a reality. She not only stayed in the horse business but promoted Peptoboonsmal to his rightful spot as one of the leading sires in the industry.

~Glory Ann Kurtz, Executive Editor, Quarter Horse News

Based on the true story of well-known cutting horse breeder Elaine Hall, Loving Larry combines romance, drama and cutting lore in 380 pages that pull the reader in for a first-class adventure.

In her first book, Penny Wormet demonstrates a fine ear for dialog, and a great sense of pacing. She devoted several years to meticulous research of the cutting horse industry, and that effort has paid off handsomely in the atmosphere and realism of her well-told story.

The book includes an appendix of pedigrees, earnings and produce statistics of the horses whose lives are intertwined with the people in this story. There's also a first-rate list of references Wormet consulted to help give her story the ring of truth.

~Alan Gold, Director of Publishing, Cutting Horse Chatter

‘Penny Wormet’s “Loving Larry” is an accurate and moving account of manic-depressive order and how that disease ultimately stole Larry Hall from himself and from his family. We do not often speak of these illnesses when they touch our lives because they manifest as behaviors: sometimes dangerous, often embarrassing and almost always inexplicable. Ms. Wormet does and outstanding job of describing the struggle of a man with an illness he can’t understand or control, and his family’s efforts to deal with his distorted thinking, frightening mood swings, and shattered insight into his need for treatment. As a psychiatrist, who specializes in the treatment of persons with severe mental illness, I applaud Elaine Hall’s courage in coming forth with this story and for her expression of the deep faith that has brought her through it all.’

~Judith Hunter, MD
Medical Director, Forensic Psychiatry
Dallas Metrocare Services

Pepto