Horse

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ARA HISTORICAL NOVEL PRIZE 2022

SHORTLISTED FOR THE FICTION INDIE BOOK AWARDS 2023

‘He tilted his desk lamp so that the light fell on the image. The head of a bright bay colt gazed out of the canvas, the expression in the eyes unusual and haunting.’

A discarded painting in a roadside clean-up, forgotten bones in a research archive, and Lexington, the greatest racehorse in US history. From these strands of fact, Geraldine Brooks weaves 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, even as the nation reels towards war. An itinerant young artist who makes his name from paintings of the horse takes up arms for the Union and reconnects with the stallion and his groom on a perilous night far from the glamour 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.

With the moral complexity of March and a multi-stranded narrative reminiscent of People of the Book, this enthralling novel is a gripping reckoning with the legacy of enslavement and racism in America. Horse is the latest masterpiece from a writer with a prodigious talent for bringing the past to life.

‘Geraldine Brooks’ soulful tour de force … The storytelling is magical and so too are the characters, whose pleasure and pain we feel intensely’ The Australian Women’s Weekly

‘Bring[s] to light the way that race and power are encoded into everyday interactions … a deeply compassionate novel’ Weekend Australian

‘Brooks’ chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps are thrilling… [Horse] is really a book about the power and pain of words… Lexington is ennobled by art and science, and roars back from obscurity to achieve the high status of metaphor’ New York Times Book Review

‘[A] sweeping tale … fluid, masterful storytelling … [Brooks] writes about our present in such a way that the tangled roots of history, just beneath the story, are both subtle and undeniable’ MAGGIE SHIP

Format: Paperback
Pages: 400
Imprint: Hachette Australia
Publication date: 14/06/2023