1930s: Life goes on, but will the world?

After a week on the road, the family returns home to Chestnut ridge. While Anna and Josephine are heartbroken at the loss of their father, family life still calls as its time to Barbara to start school! They keep her birthday simple and just for the family, feeling it is inappropriate to celebrate too soon. Yet celebrating at all wouldn't be right either, especially as Arthur and Barbara don't really understand the severity. Arthur remembers his grandfather a bit, Barbara not at all. She's only met him once in her life, after all. For her sake, the entire family puts on a brave face. They eat dinner, she blows out the cake, and Grace spends hours playing with her in a tent she's helped her build outside.

For Anna recovery comes in the form of her horses, and especially in riding in Bronco as he's now old enough. She starts training his endurance with a rider, then obstacles, and as he is a fast learner it's not too long before she can start him on beginner level competitions. They get bronze at their first try, and silver at their second, and Bronco seems to love competing as well as training. Even Thomas helps when he's not in school. 

The stable wall starts to show quite a collection of trophies by now:

But to train four grown horses takes a lot of work and time, and Anna and Johnny find that they spend nearly all of their time in the stable and next to no time together. It's time for some hard choices. The idea was never to keep every horse in the first place, but to rescue them, care for them and train them to be sold into good forever homes. Now the time has come. So the entire family heads into town, for Bronco and Starbuck to compete, and for Ranger and Crimson to be sold. It's hard, but the hardship is lessened by the new rescue-foal Misty that comes home with them. As her mother died when she was born, she has no one and is entirely dependant on Johnny and Anna, even for basic things like feeding, and they both take to her gentle nature at once. It's love at first sight! 

But even in their little safe haven, the rest of the world insist on making itself known. Through the radio news they listen to at night, through the newspapers and books they read. Even Josephine is wrapped up in the news these days, although mostly in gossiping about the new king of Britain and his American divorcee girlfriend, who is oh so stylish, but certainly cannot be queen with two marriages behind her. For Anna other news preoccupies her mind. Italy's war with Ethiopia, the outbreak of the Spanish civil war, the remilitarization of the Rhineland... Much of what she reads infuriates her.

"How can they just accept this!?!" she rants to Johnny who in spite of himself has become almost just as caught up in the news as she has.
"To prevent another war! Anything is better than that."
"Is it though? Do you really think a man like him will settle for the Rhineland? Why do you think he's rearming? The war will come, sooner or later, the question is how much time we give that man to prepare."
"I hope you are wrong." 

As 1936 turns into 1937 she devourers everything she comes across, especially favouring the accounts of the Spanish Civil War by Martha Gellhorn.
"You just like her writing because she's a woman," Johnny teases her.
"You mean like you favour Hemingway because he's a man?" She retorts. But they are both equally upset when the League of Nations forbids intervention in the civil war.
"As if those two clowns in Germany and Italy will care about that," Anna snorts.

But what hits her hard, is the news of the Japanese-Shino war. Having been so preoccupied with Europe, and her new foal and competitions she's missed paying attention to Japan. She writes her old friends, asking how they are and about what is going on. For months she waits for a reply, but when it comes it holds no good news. It's unnaturally polite and holds no information about anything other than the news that they are proud to be a part of the Japanese Empire and proud that their son is now going to fight for the Imperial army.
"They probably can't write anything else," Johnny says."I doubt their emperor sees lightly at anyone being in contact with the US."
"The world is losing its mind."
"So we keep it together here."

And so Anna spend even more time with her horses, trying to put the rest of the world out of her mind though every instinct in her body tells her not to. She can at least enjoy seeing Thomas improving (some) on the horseback as she wait with baited breath to see how long it will be before the world explodes.