The ghosts of Nietzsche, Einstein, Plato and Caesar are offering track odds!
The spirits of Dostoyevsky Mencken, Shaw and Hemmingway are calming hot, skittish thoroughbreds. And a restless Tom Austin refines his own thoughts about actions and motivations whenever he fills in as the night watchman on his stable’s shed row.
Tom Austin is not the typical itinerant worker who tries his hand at mucking stables. This 30-year-old insurance agent with a philosophical bent left his job in California to hire on at a thoroughbred stable at Belmont Park. With no prior experience and perhaps too much education, he finds that only a willingness to work and learn is needed. For his labors, he is rewarded with the fellowship of an assortment of track characters and amusing adventures while he develops his skills as a Horseman.
Join the stable hands on the yearly cycle of their travels from Saratoga to Hialeah to follow the seasons in pursuit of high-purse stakes racing. The Unlikely Horseman presents a view of the workaday life and migratory living of the usually unnoticed supporting cast behind the runs for the roses.
The author, John Bruce Tilton, has drawn from his own years of experience as a stable hand, hot walker and groom at a Belmont racing stable. Although his career was in electronics, his true passion was always writing and story telling. This novel reflects that part of Bruce’s life when he, seeking adventure, became himself a most unlikely horseman.
