"The Gallant Heart: The Story Of A Race Horse" 1954 MCMASTERS, Susanne
$250
MCMASTERS, Susanne
w/ IDELL, Albert
[204] pp.
Doubleday & Company, Inc.
1954
First Edition
8 1/2" x 5 3/4"
Illustrated by Paul Brown
VG/ VG
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This is a story by a lady about a horse. It begins in the stable of a barn in Pennsylvania where the horse is about to be born-or, as horsemen say, "foaled." It follows the horse through three years of a racing career which was more remarkable for bad luck than big winnings. Involved is a white pigeon with streaks of black in its tail feathers. Wherever the horse went the pigeon followed — even if he had to fly from Pennsylvania to Florida. Some stable folk said the pigeon was responsible for the horse's bad luck — but the lady could not quite believe that. Besides, she could not get out of her head an idea implanted there when the colt first stood up on his spindly long legs not many minutes after he was born — that this colt, grown up to be a big red chestnut with a white blaze in his face, was destined somehow to be another Big Red or Man O' War. All the winnings of the other colts and fillies in the modest nursery of racing stock which she and her husband maintained went to keep this chestnut in the game. The nearest he came to being another Man O' War was to be used in trial shots for a movie about Big Red that never reached the screen. They were taken at Saratoga, where Man O' War lost his one race to a critter called Upset.
"The Gallant Heart" is not a success story, but essentially it is a true story, and there is a warmth about it in regard to people and horses which will not be missed by horse lovers- a breed of folk not yet extinct in spite of the fact that they mostly ride about in gas buggies and their horses do their road work in trucks. Mrs. McMasters is one of that breed and an easy mark for all others of the tribe-trainers, jockeys, stable boys or what not.
Anyway, it is a story about a horse and a family devoted to the horse, a family which includes a little girl who is a gallant heart, even if she is called Pinky. Paul Brown, who knows horses, has provided the pictures.