Why a Booktrail?
2000s: A tale of breeding champion thoroughbreds – humans as well as horses.
The Sport of Kings
What you need to know before your trail
Hellsmouth is a thorughbred racehorse which runs for the glory of the Forge family, one of Kentucky’s oldest and most powerful dynasties.
Henry Forge together with daughter, Henrietta are obsessed with breeding the next superhorse. But one day, a stranger, Allmon Shaughnessy, an ambitious young black man, comes to work on their farm after a stint in prison and changes their lives for ever.
Entangled by fear, prejudice, and lust, the three tether their personal dreams of glory to the speed and grace of Hellsmouth.
Travel Guide
The world of horse racing in Kentucky
Welcome to the decadent South:
The neighbor’s tobacco plants extend as far as the boy can see, so that impossibly varying shades of green seem to comprise the known world, the undulating earth an expanse of green sea dotted only by black-ship tobacco barns, a green so penetrating, it promises a cool, fertile core a mile beneath his feet.
The world of horses – Kentucky Derby Museum
This is a world where horse racing, the brutal world of control and hard training is a world where the horses have no freedom, no choice to do the back breaking work they do, are at the mercy of their masters:
That the horse has true and false floating ribs. That it has 205 bones in its body, the chestnuts on the backs of the limbs being remnants of the ancient horse alive in the modern; that, like a human, the horse sweats when it’s nervous. That I am as trapped as any Thoroughbred.
The world of horse racing is like the world of slavery in any ways – freedom is all anyone, any animal longs for. Forced breeding is never right no matter if you are man or beast. What about what happens to those horses, those slaves who don’t do what they are told?
Racism rears its ugly head:
“The problem, Henry, as I have always seen it, is that the Negro is fundamentally a child, and children are incapable of understanding their own inferiority. Indeed, they generally err on the side of grandiose delusion.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Sport of Kings
Author/Guide: C. E. Morgan Destination: Kentucky, Louisville Departure Time: 2000s
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