Words could be snares.” One hundred and seventy years later, Theo, the Oxford-educated, polo-playing son of civil servants, cannot escape the racist tropes that pollute the most mundane interactions. Jarret averts his eyes when he is asked for his opinion, acknowledging that “it wasn’t a good idea to speak to a White stranger without putting a deal of thought into it. Horse shifts between Jarret in 1850 and Theo and Jess in 2019 (with a whistle stop in New York City in the 1950s), and it carries the heavy burden of acknowledging the deep roots and painful persistence of structural racism.

Caleb’s Crossing, set in 1665, told the story of the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College. Her novel March, which won a Pulitzer Prize, imagined the Civil War experiences of chaplain John March, the fictional father of the girls in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Unfortunately, his father will never live to see or profit from this achievement.īrooks is known for undertaking extensive research, and in the novel’s afterword she says that as she pored over archives she was struck by the stories of the Black grooms, trainers, and jockeys who played a “central role in the wealth creation of the antebellum thoroughbred industry.” These key figures, of course, are hidden in the margins of history, a place Brooks is always eager to explore. He spends all his waking hours with the horse, and through hard work and unwavering commitment he eventually raises one of the greatest racing stallions in turf history.

Jarret proves to be as talented as his father. Warfield promises Harry Lewis, a talented Black trainer, an interest in the racehorse in lieu of a year’s wages - an exciting prospect, since Lewis hopes to use any future winnings to buy the freedom of his son Jarret, whom Warfield has enslaved. The action then shifts to 1850, to the day Lexington is born on the Kentucky farm of the physician Elisha Warfield. Weeks later, when the couple begin to fall in love, Theo will wonder how to answer the question of how they met, since “being tacitly accused of bike theft wasn’t exactly a meet cute.” The encounter is awkward: Theo, who is Black, recognizes Jess as the white woman who had earlier confronted him when she thought he was stealing her bike.

Theo takes the artwork to the Smithsonian for evaluation and is introduced to Jess, who is restoring the skeleton of the same horse for an exhibit.

The novel opens in Washington, DC, where art historian Theo is rescuing a painting of Lexington, one of America’s most renowned racehorses, from his neighbor’s trash. Yet readers who appreciate rigorous historical research and polished storytelling should certainly stay the course. A story of present-day interracial romance woven together with a history of thoroughbred racing in the antebellum South, Horse, a new novel by Geraldine Brooks ’83JRN, is no safe bet.

March brooks book review