Hart, Alison. Samuel's horses.Hart, Alison. Samuel's horses. Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster U.S. publishing company. It was founded in 1924 by Richard L. Simon (1899–1960) and M. Lincoln Schuster (1897–1970), whose initial project, the original crossword-puzzle book, was a best-seller. , Aladdin. 141p. c2005.0-689-86777-8. $4.99. J Hart has written another historical novel set during the Civil War era and told from the perspective of a young slave. The first in a forthcoming trilogy A company founded in 1979 by Gene Amdahl to commercialize wafer scale integration and build supercomputers. It raised a quarter of a billion dollars, the largest startup funding in history, but could not create its 2.5" superchip. , the book's title seems ironic since for much of the novel Samuel doesn't even own himself let alone horses. Master Giles, his British owner, is positioned as a benevolent be·nev·o·lent adj. 1. Characterized by or suggestive of doing good. 2. Of, concerned with, or organized for the benefit of charity. master who treats his slaves humanely but refuses to openly support the Union or Confederate cause. Most of the novel focuses on Samuel and his ambition to become a jockey under the tutelage TUTELAGE. State of guardianship; the condition of one who is subject to the control of a guardian. of his father. When Samuel's father (a free black man) purchases his wife's freedom, he decides to join the Union army to earn money to free Samuel as well. Suddenly, it seems like Samuel's first horse race will be his last. Master Giles hires a new horse trainer In horse racing, a trainer is responsible for preparing a horse for races. As such, he takes responsibility for exercising it, getting it race-ready and determining which races it should enter. and jockey, and Samuel is reduced to grooming horses again. But Samuel's natural love of horses and ambition to become a jockey is so fervent he risks his own life to save the horses from the abuse of the new trainer and from One Arm, the leader of a band of raiders determined to steal Master Giles' thoroughbreds. Similar to Fires of Jubilee, the slave characters see freedom as "not about leaving" the plantation, but about "caring for others." The "others" are usually the whites who owned them. In exchange for saving the horses, Master Giles gives Samuel his freedom, but he remains an employee on the plantation. Hart does a good job of illuminating the harsh living conditions living conditions npl → condiciones fpl de vida living conditions npl → conditions fpl de vie living conditions living of the black Union soldiers and the families they left behind, many of whom were tossed off slave plantations after the men joined the army. Hart's novel is also commendable because of its effort to expose the forced anonymity of black jockeys, who were not mentioned in newspapers because of their racial identity. The novel has a timely focus, considering the recent attention given to jockeys like Jimmy Winkfield and to the racism that still exists in the world of horse racing horse racing, trials of speed involving two or more horses. It includes races among harnessed horses with one of two particular gaits, among saddled Thoroughbreds (or, less frequently, quarterhorses) on a flat track, or among saddled horses over a turf course with today. KaaVonia Hinton, Old Dominian Univ., VA J--Recommended for junior high school students. The contents are of particular interest to young adolescent and their teachers. |
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