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While it's not uncommon for me to like people, and while I have a weak spot for dogs, I don't have any special affinity for horses, except the one created here in Gordon's novel.' Most importantly, though, by the end of the book I cared about the people, about the horses, and about an old dog named Elizabeth. Even descriptions of the most mundane actions read like poetry. The world of this particular horse track is well crafted, and the reader understands the poor racers and petty mobsters who run the place, almost like they'd always known them. Gordon crafts a collection of excellent characters, from the young and naive Maggie, to the veteran Medicine Ed (whose dialect is pitch perfect and never difficult to read). As soon as I finished the second chapter, though, I was hooked, and the novel kept getting better from there. I didn't care about small-stakes horse racing, and I'm always wary of award winners. 'I have to be honest, the only reason I picked this book up was because the author, Jaimy Gordon, was going to be giving a lecture in town. She adores the horses in all their rundown glory and becomes fascinated by the misfits who populate the backwater West Virginia track-including some local gangsters looking for a big score of their own.

Complicating matters further is Tommy’s tragic love, Maggie. But his plans go awry when everyone at the Indian Mound Downs track seems to be on to his shenanigans. In the early 1970s, horse trainer Tommy Hansel cooks up a crafty get-rich-quick scheme. Jaimy Gordon’s engrossing Lord of Misrule is a National Book Award winner.

Lord of misrule by jaimy gordon