Let’s start with the discarded painting of a thoroughbred racehorse. Young Jarret will remain with Lexington until the horse’s death in 1875.īrooks moves the Smithsonian side of the story between the years 2019-2020, and the backstory of all that research, scientific, historical, and social, taking place in the South from1850, all the way to 1875, in New York, New York. In the same chapter, we witness the birth of a foal who will be called Darley, but in one of several ownerships, Darley will be renamed Lexington. Black trainers and jockeys have deep roots in American horseracing. Warfield not only owns all the thoroughbreds on his farm, but he also owns slaves, and Jarret is the five-year-old slave son of his Black horse trainer, Harry Lewis, who has purchased his own freedom.

And Jarret? Remember, this is pre-Civil War south.

Warfield, widely known for his race-winning thoroughbreds. The third chapter is “Warfield’s Jarret, The Meadows, Lexington, Kentucky, 1850.” The Meadows is a thoroughbred breeding farm owned by a Dr. So, where’s the history if the story begins in 2019? Hold your horses. Jess works at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. Her present job is putting together the newly arrived dismantled bones of a famous American racehorse that had been displayed long ago in a London museum. In Chapter Two, (still in the year 2019) we meet Jess, a young zoologist whose field is putting ancient bones together (articulating) for museum display purposes. We all love a good mystery, and historical mysteries can be as enticing as any fictional murder mystery. The novel begins in 2019 when a young Black man, a writer in a graduate program at Georgetown University, retrieves from his neighbor’s already picked-over curbside “Free Stuff” an old oil painting of a racehorse. Historical fiction doesn’t get much better.

I am not horsing around when I tell you that this month’s “must-read” is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks’ newest novel, Horse. Horseracing, Black history, mystery, the novel Horse has it all. She moves us from 2019 back to the pre-Civil War south, and back to today’s headlines. Horse – Once again, Geraldine Brooks uncovers little known parts of our American history.

Best geraldine brooks books