The Horse Boy will do more than chronicle Rowan and his family’s journey across this vast, wild landscape. It will delve into the strange world of autism itself, examining the conflicting theories that try to explain its exponential from one child in ten thousand just a decade ago to, to today’s epidemic. It will examine the relationship between humans and animals, between different cultures, different ways of being (autistic versus normal, or ‘neuro-typical’), and the nature of healing – orthodox treatments versus the traditional arts. We will talk to the experts in the field, well-known researchers into autism such as Dr Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge University, Dr Temple Grandin, recovered autist and professor of animal behaviour at Colorado State University, and psycho-therapist and expert of shamanism Dr Bradford Keeney of the University of Arizona. We will talk to the shamans themselves, ask them just what is this thing called trance? And we will learn something about who we are, about where our world is right now (for an increasing number of biologists and medics trace autism’s rise with the accelerated upsurge in pollution, especially of heavy metals, caused by the greenhouse effect, which parallels Global Warming), and about the nature of love between human and animal, horse and boy, father and son.
The Horse Boy will do more than chronicle Rowan and his family’s journey across this vast, wild land...
