Good evening.

Welcome to another edition of Inside to Cover.

I am your honored and humble host, Ted Ayres.

And I want to thank you for watching.

PBS Kansas, the home of seriously good TV and for allowing me to come into your home for a few minutes this evening.

Initially I want you to know that I would love to hear from you regarding any of our shows and any books that you would like to recommend to me.

Thank you, Nick.

Who knows?

One of your books might end up featured on Inside the Cover.

Thank you, Dale.

You can contact me at the address on the screen.

In that regard, I also want to remind you how carefully we consider books for this program.

I have read every one that we feature and I offer a book to you because I enjoyed it, because I considered the writing to be excellent, because the subject matter is important, and because I feel the book has significant merit for seriously good readers.

Tonight we have such a book for you.

Do you like horses?

Do you enjoy horse racing?

Do you like art?

Are you a painter?

Are you interested in pre-Civil War American history?

Do you like museums or are you a particular devotee of the Smithsonian?

Do you find the study of bones fascinating?

Do you like solving mysteries?

If so, tonight's book is one you will enjoy spending some time with.

It's now time to go inside to cover.

Tonight's book is Horse by Geraldine Brooks.

It was copyrighted in 2022, and I finished my copy on October 21, 2022.

Geraldine Brooks is an Australian American journalist and writer whose 2005 novel March won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Following graduation from the University of Sydney, she was a rookie reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald, and after winning a memorial scholarship, she came to the United States where she earned her master's at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

In 1983, as a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, she covered crises in Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East.

Her first book, Nine Parts of Desire, was published in 1994 and was an international bestseller, translated into 17 languages.

She is also the author of People of the Book, which I read and enjoyed in Horse.

Brooks takes a number of disparate but connected threads from real life and weaves them into a compelling and colorful quilt of clever and entertaining writing.

She moves effortlessly from plantation life in Kentucky and the unique and cosmopolitan ethos of New Orleans in the 1950s to current day.

Georgetown, Washington, D.C. and the Smithsonian Museum supports center in Maryland to a fashionable art gallery in New York City in the 1950s, whose owner is a friend of Jackson Pollock's to the breeding, training and racing of thoroughbred horses and the impact of the civil war on that industry all the way to an early day.

Itinerant painter specializing in equine art, Thomas J. Scott.

The all connecting lynchpin of horse is Lexington Foaled as Darley in March of 1850.

Lexington was a bay colt bred by Dr. Alisha Warfield at Warfield Stud Farm, the Meadows near Lexington, Kentucky.

As a racehorse, Lexington won six of his seven race starts.

But his greatest fame came as the most successful sire of the second half of the 19th century.

He was the leading sire in North America 16 times, and he was part of the first group of horses inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 1955.

Horse contains multiple references to many real life individuals connected to Lexington, but Lexington's life and story is told and highlighted by several fictional characters.

Tonight's book has been Horse by Geraldine Brooks.

This is a well organized and thought out book that is interesting, entertaining and very well written.

I recommend it to you with great confidence.

I also look forward to seeing you again here on Inside the Cover.

Good night.