Horse

point of greeting the neighbors. Most responded with a friendly smile. But the guy across the street hadn't even made eye contact. The only time Theo had heard his voice was when it was raised, yelling at his wife.

 

It was a week since the ambulance had come in the night. Like most city dwellers, Theo could sleep right through a siren that Dopplered away, but this one had hiccuped to sudden silence. Theo jolted awake to spinning lights bathing his walls in a wash of blue and red. He jumped out of bed, ready to help if he could. But in the end, he and Clancy just stood and watched as the EMTs brought out the body bag, turned the lights off, and drove silently away.

 

At his grandmother's house in Lagos, any death in the neighborhood caused a flurry in the kitchen. As a kid visiting on school holidays, he'd often been tasked with delivering the steaming platters of food to the bereaved. So he made a stew the next day, wrote a condolence card, and carried it across the street. When no one answered the door, he left it on the stoop. An hour later, he found it back on his own doorstep with a terse note: Thanks but I don't like chicken. Theo looked down at Clancy and shrugged. "I thought everyone liked chicken." They ate it themselves. It was delicious, infused with the complex flavors of grilled peppers and his homemade, slow-simmered stock. Not that Clancy, the kelpie, cared about that. In the no-nonsense insouciance of his hardy breed, he'd eat anything.

 

The thought of that casserole made Theo's mouth water. He glanced at the clock in the corner of his laptop. Four p.m. Too early to quit. As he started typing, Clancy circled under the desk and flopped back down across his instep.

 

These arresting compelling images are the only known surviving works created by an artist born into slavery enslaved. Vernacular, yet eloquent, they become semaphores from a world convulsed. Living Surviving through the Civil War, forsaking escaping the tyranny

. Calling all horse girls: This is the story of the most important racehorse you've never heard of, but it's also so much more than that.
Good Housekeeping 

A testament to the intelligence and humanity of animals, a stinging rebuke of racist and abusive humans, and a study of how the past gets recorded, remembered, and remade . . . anyone who ever grew up loving horses, anyone who dearly loves an animal, will find a cornucopia of riches in this novel.
Boston Globe

This heart-pounding novel about a famous antebellum champion thoroughbred named Lexington and his talented, enslaved trainer circles two tracks, one historical, one contemporary, to highlight the ongoing scourge of racism in America.
Christian Science Monitor

Brooks is an accomplished writer . . . [She] has a talent and passion for research that is fully expressed here she writes beautifully about the anatomy of horses and the delicate work of articulating their skeletons, arranging every bone in its proper place. The descriptions of 19th-century horse racing, when the animals were bred differently and raced much longer tracks, are thrilling.
The Atlantic

Horse mingles the past with the present, and history melds with well-informed invention . . . Brooks crafts an exceptionally sensitive portrayal of an enslaved groom and his special bond with Lexington.
Smithsonian Magazine

Horse glows . . . engrossing, masterful . . . Brooks makes each setting come alive . . . [N]ot the least of the lessons of Horse is an understanding of the redemptive power of art.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

[F]ew authors can claim the range of Geraldine Brooks . . . What truly sets her work apart from many others, however, is the rigorous and extensive nature of her research [...] which shines through on every page. Readers will not only enjoy Brooks s well-told tales but will also likely learn something new along the way . . . The end result is a deliciously dense, character-rich exploration of the world of horse racing that still manages to make some stinging observations about the modern-day state of race in America.
Paste

[Y]ou won t be able to contain yourself while reading this elegant story about three generations of people inspired by the story of America s greatest racehorse . . . This is a novel about love, anger, passion, and justice unbridled and bursting.
LitHub

Brooks is such a sharp pleasure to read . . . her research is meticulous, but she wears it lightly. And she writes supple, vigorous prose . . . she sees a universal condition that transcends the boundary lines of time and place . . . in short, she operates one of the best time machines around.
Garden & Gun

With exceptional characterizations, Pulitzer Prize winner Brooks tells an emotionally impactful tale . . . [The] settings are pitch-perfect, and the story brings to life the important roles filled by Black horsemen in America s past. Brooks also showcases the magnificent beauty and competitive spirit of Lexington himself.
Booklist (starred review)

Brooks probes our understanding of history to reveal the power structures that create both the facts and the fiction . . . [She] has penned a clever and richly detailed novel about how we commodify, commemorate, and quantify winning in the United States, all through the lens of horse racing.
Library Journal (starred review)

[A] marvelous novel. Brooks structures the book like a mystery . . . Through Jarret's story, the author reveals the unique and indispensable role Black trainers and jockeys played in the pre-Civil War South . . . Equestrian or no, readers will appreciate Brooks's invitation to linger awhile among beautiful and graceful horses, to see the devotion they engendered in her characters.
Shelf Awareness

A fascinating saga based on the true story of a famous 19th-century racehorse . . . Brooks s multiple narratives and strong character development captivate, and she soars with the story of Jarret.
Publishers Weekly

[Brooks] demonstrates imaginative empathy [...] and provides some sardonic correctives to White cluelessness . . . Brooks skillfully [...] demonstrate[s] how the poison of racism lingers. Contemporary parallels are unmistakable . . . Strong storytelling in service of a stinging moral message.  
Kirkus Reviews (starred review) 

[A] sweeping exploration of racial injustice.  
Electric Literature

Praise for Geraldine Brooks:

Brooks is a master at bringing the past alive . . . in [her]skillful hands the issues of the past echo our own deepest concerns: love and loss, drama and tragedy, chaos and brutality.
Alice Hoffman, The Washington Post

[Brooks] makes a masterly case for the generative power of retelling . . . [her] real accomplishment is that she also enables readers to feel the spirit of the place.
The New York Times

There s something bordering on the supernatural about Geraldine Brooks. She seems able to transport herself back to earlier time periods, to time travel. Sometimes, reading her work, she draws you so thoroughly into another era that you swear she s actually lived in it. With sensory acuity and a deep and complex understanding of emotional states, she conjures up the way we lived then . . . enrapturing.
The Boston Globe