Those in her sixth novel are no different. These characters are unearthed like found bones and a skeleton is created and even added to. In an interview, she said, “that someone rises from the grave and begins to talk to me.” Her work has focused on such deceased characters like Anna Firth, a girl living during the bubonic plague King David from the bible and the first Native American, Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, to graduate from Harvard-in 1665.

Her knowledge not only builds the world, past and present, but it gives it a human warmth-a love that alights on the page, passed on to the reader. When a foal (later named Lexington) comes along, Jarret’s skill is proven, but his life is propelled outside his relativity quiet, insulated life.īeing a horse lover and a rider herself, Brooks easily gives details and descriptions about equines and the sports they participate in. Elisah Warfield (his former owner) as head trainer and stable manager. His father, Harry Lewis, has recently bought himself out of bondage but continues to work for Dr. Jarret is an enslaved groom and trainer who is akin to horses as Mozart is to music. Then shifting to the past and the 'gallant South,' we get a glimpse of Kentucky and the world of horse racing in all its glory (and gory glitter).

on equestrian art of the antebellum South. When he sees a painting of a white-socked horse his neighbor is throwing out, he knows there’s something special there-he is, after all, doing his Ph.D. Theo is the son of foreign diplomats and a graduate student living in Washington D.C. Her latest book, Horse (2022), returns to the 1850s and Civil War era but jumps to the present as well.

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