What a ride.

Battleship Daring Heiress Teenage Americas

This book is totally a huge history lesson written with a velvet hand. I was absolutely immersed in it almost from the first chapter. I am not normally a history buff but part of my reasons for loving this book are a). I have been a horsewoman all my life. b). I grew up in Maryland only a short time after this all took place. c). All the hunting, point to points and steeple chases mentioned, I knew about and often had seen some of them. d). My father, as a young man, worked for the duPont's on their "plantation" in New York and I remember being taken to see the glorious gardens there as a youngster. So I was already highly invested in reading about the history I came from.
The book also transcends being a history in that not only are the characters real but the author seems to know them inside and out. Amazing really when she did not live in their time frame and finding all that intimate and detailed knowledge must have been hard indeed. She wrote about them as if she had lived beside them. A beautiful job. All the facts, all the horse language being so right on and explained to the less knowledgeable. The whole narrative flows. It involves several main characters that surrounded Marion duPont. Spanning coast to coast when she eventually married Randolph Scott after he became an actor of some repute and then across to England where she brought a well known trainer, Roy Hobbs and his son Bruce into working with her "little horse that could" to make him ready to do the famous and frighting Grand National steeplechase.
If your looking for a pool side book, this ain't it friends. There is a LOT of horse talk and I think that might bore some people but the history surrounding it all is really fascinating and I really was happy to revisit it in Dorothy's extremely well written book. This is a book that I will always have handy because to me, its like visiting my home town in Maryland and walking the walk and talking the talk as a young woman who fox hunted, showed hunters and jumpers and was "horsey" from head to toe.

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