A stallion, his groom and truth about race
In her latest historical novel Horse, Australian-American journalist and Pulitzer Prizewinning novelist Geraldine Brooks recounts the story of a legendary, winning thoroughbred stallion.
As we have come to expect from her, she also gives voice to people whose stories have gone unrecorded, delving into the history of the black horsemen, trainers, jockeys and grooms, most of them enslaved, who were behind the horse racing industry in the antebellum South, specifically Kentucky.
In a letter accompanying advance copies of the novel, Brooks marvelled: “A horse so fast that the mass-produced stopwatch was manufactured so his fans could clock times in races that regularly drew more than 20,000 spectators. A horse so handsome, that the best equestrian artists vied to paint him.” Lexington was not only fierce, but also famously virile, becoming the greatest sire of his age and the father of racehorse dynasties.
Horse is based on the true story of Lexington, one of the most extraordinary racehorses of the 19th century. The multistranded narrative covers three eras, vividly brought together to create a sweeping story of courage, obsession and injustice.
One strand of the novel is set in Kentucky in the mid-19th century. Enslaved groom Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South, while the nation moves closer to civil war. A travelling 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 one night, far from the glamour of the racetrack.
In New York City, 1954, Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a 19th-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious origin.
In 2019, Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-born art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse in Washington DC. Jess, a young osteologist —a scholar of bones is reassembling Lexington’s skeleton for clues to his power and endurance, while Theo, who has found in the street an anonymous 19th-century portrait of a racehorse depicted “with black Jarret, his groom” is uncovering the lost history of the black horsemen who were critical to his racing success. Theo and Jess bond and soon fall in love, even as they confront contemporary police brutality and race relations in the US.
Both the painting and many of the people in the novel really did exist, even if not much is known about some of them. Though Lexington’s life was well documented, the story behind the horse’s black groom was a mystery. Imagining who he was is the fodder for Brooks’ novel. As she says in her afterword, she used the absence of any record of Jarret to “imagine the character in the novel”.
Beneath the attraction of the sport, lies a shameful part of American history. Antebellum horse racing was an industry of white prestige built on the backbone of black workers. In her afterword, Brooks writes: “As I began to research Lexington’s life, it became clear to me that this novel could not merely be about a racehorse. It would also need to be about race.”
Each strand of this intriguing novel is equally compelling. Brooks has long had the knack for writing historical fiction that echoes the current zeitgeist and injects new blood into timeless topics. In Horse, she fleshes out the story of this incredible 19thcentury athlete and his unsung trainer, while echoing the complexity of race relations in the US today. Where history has failed, she succeeds in amplifying marginalised voices.