Horse by Geraldine Brooks

The advertised blurb for Horse reads:

‘An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union.’

This is only a snippet of what Horse has to offer. The novel unfolds across dual timelines: one follows Jarret, the enslaved groom and trainer, and his deep connection to the horse in 1850s Kentucky, and how both their lives are influenced by other characters of the time. The other timeline is set in the present day, where an Australian scientist finds the horse’s skeleton in the museum where she works, and a Nigerian-American art historian stumbles across a priceless painting of the horse in a discarded pile of items being cleared out of a home.

It’s a sprawling and ambitious book that blends imagination and historical fact. Some characters are drawn from real life, with their stories partly conjured based on the author’s meticulous research. The story operates on multiple levels. As Brooks herself explained, the story is about a racehorse and it’s about race. It’s about the enslaved Black jockeys and trainers who were critical to horse training and racing but later sidelined by the industry. Yet the novel’s scope reaches far beyond this.

The book became a New York Times bestseller after its release in 2022. Geraldine Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2006 for her novel, March. She writes rich historical narratives and themes that continue to have relevance in contemporary times.