When Velveteen Vargas, an eleven-year-old Fresh Air Fund kid from Brooklyn, comes to stay with a family in upstate New York, what begins as a two-week visit blossoms into something much more significant. Soon Velvet finds herself caught between two opposing worlds -- her liberal, childless host family and her tormented, fiercely loving mother. The one constant becomes Velvet's newly discovered passion for horseback riding -- and especially for an abused, unruly mare named Fugly Girl.