"Brooks' chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps are thrilling."
--The New York Times Book Review
"Horse isn't just an animal story--it's a moving narrative about race
and art." --TIME
****"A thrilling story about humanity in all its ugliness and beauty .
. . the evocative voices create a story so powerful, reading it feels
like watching a neck-and-neck horse race, galloping to its
conclusion--you just can't look away." --Oprah Daily
A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the
greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer
Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice
across American history
Kentucky, 1850. 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. On a perilous night, he reunites
with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any
racetrack.
New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for
taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a
nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.
Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia,
and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves
unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse--one
studying the stallion's bones for clues to his power and endurance, the
other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were
critical to his racing success.
Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred
Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession,
and our unfinished reckoning with racism.
