Book Discussion of HORSE by Geraldine Brooks with Denison Professor Margot Singer
Thursday, July 7, 2022 7:00 pm EDT to 8:00 pm EDT
Gramercy Books in Bexley, Ohio
Register for this EventJoin us for a book club discussion with moderation by Denison professor and author Margot Singer!
Denison is partnering with Gramercy Books for this book club conversation. From Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks comes Horse, a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington. The discussion of this novel will be facilitated by Denison University writing scholar and writer Margot Singer.
The book club event will be held at Gramercy Books in Bexley. A ticket to this program includes a copy of Horse at a 15% discount. It is strongly encouraged that registrants read the book prior to the program.
Proof of full vaccination is required to attend, and masks are encouraged.
About the Book
A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, Pulitzer Prize-winner Geraldine Brooks, author of March and the international bestsellers The Secret Chord, Caleb’s Crossing, People of the Book, and Year of Wonders, braids 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. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor 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.
Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism. 
About the Moderator
Margot Singer is the author of a novel, Underground Fugue, winner of the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for American Jewish fiction; a collection of short stories, The Pale of Settlement, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction; and co-editor with Nicole Walker of Bending Genre, a collection of essays on creative nonfiction. Winner of the 2013 James Jones First Novel Fellowship, Margot’s short stories are widely published, and she is professor of English and Director of Creative Writing and Director of the Eisner Center and the Arts at Denison University.
