Think the next Educated or Wild. Palmer's memoir of beating the
odds to become a horse champion is an inspiring saga of
perseverance--and a classic underdog tale. --Entertainment Weekly
At the age of nineteen, Lara Prior-Palmer discovered a website devoted
to "the world's longest, toughest horse race"―an annual competition of
endurance and skill that involves dozens of riders racing a series of
twenty-five wild ponies across 1,000 kilometers of Mongolian grassland.
On a whim, she decided to enter the race. As she boarded a plane to East
Asia, she was utterly unprepared for what awaited her.
Riders often spend years preparing to compete in the Mongol Derby, a
course that re-creates the horse messenger system developed by Genghis
Khan. Many fail to finish. Prior-Palmer had no formal training. She was
driven by her own restlessness, stubbornness, and a lifelong love of
horses. She raced for ten days through extreme heat and terrifying
storms, catching a few hours of sleep where she could at the homes of
nomadic families. Battling bouts of illness and dehydration, exhaustion
and bruising falls, she decided she had nothing to lose. Each dawn she
rode out again on a fresh horse, scrambling up mountains, swimming
through rivers, crossing woodlands and wetlands, arid dunes and open
steppe, as American television crews chased her in their jeeps.
Told with terrific suspense and style, in a voice full of poetry and
soul, Rough Magic captures the extraordinary story of one young woman
who forged ahead, against all odds, to become the first female winner of
this breathtaking race.
Taking off on a horse into the Mongolian Steppe sounds like the
bracing inverse to an overpopulated, busy urban life, but having the
skills and grit to pull it off is another thing entirely. . . . Lara
Prior-Palmer attempted the Mongol Derby not really knowing what she was
getting into; she ended it knowing much more about herself, and a race
champion besides. ―Estelle Tang, Elle
