#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
November 1958: the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden in New
York City. Into the rarefied atmosphere of wealth and tradition comes
the most unlikely of horses--a drab white former plow horse named
Snowman--and his rider, Harry de Leyer. They were the longest of all
longshots--and their win was the stuff of legend.
Harry de Leyer first saw the horse he would name Snowman on a bleak
winter afternoon between the slats of a rickety truck bound for the
slaughterhouse. He recognized the spark in the eye of the beaten-up
horse and bought him for eighty dollars. On Harry's modest farm on Long
Island, the horse thrived. But the recent Dutch immigrant and his
growing family needed money, and Harry was always on the lookout for the
perfect thoroughbred to train for the show-jumping circuit--so he
reluctantly sold Snowman to a farm a few miles down the road.
But Snowman had other ideas about what Harry needed. When he turned up
back at Harry's barn, dragging an old tire and a broken fence board,
Harry knew that he had misjudged the horse. And so he set about teaching
this shaggy, easygoing horse how to fly. One show at a time, against
extraordinary odds and some of the most expensive thoroughbreds alive,
the pair climbed to the very top of the sport of show jumping.
Here is the dramatic and inspiring rise to stardom of an unlikely duo,
based on the insight and recollections of "the Flying Dutchman" himself.
Their story captured the heart of Cold War-era America--a story of
unstoppable hope, inconceivable dreams, and the chance to have it all.
Elizabeth Letts's message is simple: Never give up, even when the
obstacles seem sky-high. There is something extraordinary in all of us.
