The historical novel ‘Horse’ sheds light on real-life racism

In 2019, a PhD student in art history rescues an oil painting of a racehorse from a pile of discarded stuff on a Georgetown sidewalk, and a zoologist finds a skeleton marked “Horse” in a Smithsonian attic. In 1850, an enslaved boy is present at the birth of a foal. These are the ingredients with which Geraldine Brooks begins her new novel, “Horse,” and, goodness, they are just as beguiling as her fluid, masterful storytelling.

From the beginning, the weave of the narrative is clear: It’s no surprise that the horse in the painting is the same animal whose bones are collecting dust in the Smithsonian and the same again as the newborn foal who will find a devoted, lifelong companion in the boy, Jarret. The horse’s name is Lexington, and he was a real-life racehorse who won six of his seven starts and became a legendary thoroughbred sire whose offspring dominated American racing in the late 19th century. Brooks includes other figures from history: Lexington’s various owners; Thomas J. Scott, a Pennsylvania-born animal painter who served in the Union Army during the Civil War; and the modernist art dealer Martha Jackson. But Brooks’s central characters - Jarret; the art historian Theo; and the zoologist Jess - are invented.

Jarret is the child of Harry Lewis, a horse trainer who was able to buy his own freedom in antebellum Kentucky. Harry’s employer, Dr. Elisha Warfield, offers to give the colt Lexington to Harry in lieu of a year’s wages so that Harry, if he makes the horse a success, might earn enough to purchase his son. This bargain proves too good to be true. Once Lexington wins his first race, Harry’s ownership gives covetous White horsemen the necessary leverage to take the animal from him. It turns out there is a law forbidding Black people from running horses, and so Dr. Warfield is blackmailed into selling both Lexington and Jarret. The young man and the horse are sent south, eventually to the massive racing operation of Richard Ten Broeck in Louisiana. Of course, the abhorrent and absurd truth is that both Lexington and Jarret are considered livestock, resources to be exploited until they die. Ten Broeck recognizes the value of Jarret’s skill with horses and deep rapport with Lexington and, in what could be mistaken for generosity but is actually just canny exploitation, elevates him to the status of deputy trainer, a promotion that gives Jarret responsibility without true authority.

A century and a half later,

Theo and Jess are brought together by Lexington’s remnants: his portrait, his bones. Theo, who is Black, is the child of diplomats, a Nigerian mother and an American father. He grew up in British boarding schools and was a polo star at Oxford before the indignities of racism - from which privilege could not insulate him - drove him from the sport. His interest in the horse portrait is casual at first, then sharpens as he homes in on the presence of Black men in similar works from the era grooms and trainers - likely to have been enslaved. Jess is white, Australian and an odd duck, fascinated since childhood with the bones of living things.