This refrain, decidedly self-serving when uttered by narcissistic Judith, later swells to a chorus of more justifiably bitter female voices. It’s his twisted way of reclaiming the girl from her mother, Judith, who exits the marriage bemoaning women’s hard lot in a man’s world. Henry’s sense of entitlement extends to his daughter Henrietta, with whom he first has sex when she is only 13. Yet he unquestioningly accepts his father’s belief that the world and all its fruits belong by natural right to white male aristocrats like themselves. Don’t be fooled by the title: “The Sport of Kings” is about horse racing the way “Moby-Dick” is about hunting whales.īreeding thoroughbreds is an act of rebellion for Henry Forge, whose 1950s childhood is dominated by a brutal father who proclaims their Kentucky estate must always be devoted to farming. Morgan’s majestic, sorrowful new novel transforms the saga of two families into a vast drama encompassing all of American history. 'A contemporary portrait of a family subsumed by the scars of slavery'- Provided by publisher.Even more ambitious than her fine debut, “All the Living,” C.E.Morgan has crafted an American myth, a contemporary portrait of the scars of the past that run through a family, and of our desperate need to escape our history, to subsume it with pleasure-or to rise above it with glory'-Provided by publisher. A majestic story of speed and hunger, racism and justice, this novel is an astonishment from start to finish. The Sport of Kings has the grace of a parable and the force of an epic.

Together, the three stubbornly try to create a new future through sheer will-one that isn't written in their very fabric-while they mold Hellsmouth into a champion. Their conflict escalates when Allmon Shaughnessy, a black man fresh from prison, comes to work in the stables, and the ugliness of the farm's past and the exigencies of appetite become evident. His daughter, Henrietta, becomes his partner in the endeavor, although she has desires of her own. Descended from one of the first settlers to brave the Gap, Henry Forge, through an act of naked ambition, is attempting to blaze a new path, breeding horses on the family's crop farm. One of the oldest and proudest families in Kentucky, the Forge family is as mythic as the history of the South itself.

'Hellsmouth, a willful thoroughbred filly with the blood of Triple Crown winners flowing through her veins, has the legacy of the Forges riding on her.

The Sport of Kings by C.E. Morgan