"Horse" was a deeply feeling and intensely researched story. The chapters about Jarret were the strongest parts of this book — Brooks, a white woman, did an admirable job trying to write from the perspective of an enslaved Black man, though it helped that his chief characteristic was a consuming love of his horse, which many white girls can relate to. She never let him become purely an object of pity, nor did she give him a fantastical life untrue to conditions in the antebellum South. In so doing she created a fiercely lovable character who pulled me easily through the book's ~400 pages.

The contemporary chapters, while masterfully woven in to reveal and hint at key points from the past, occasionally grated. I appreciate that Brooks didn't try to create a perfect ally in Jess — many of her conversations with Theo and other Black men were incredibly frustrating — but the two often felt like props for a Racism 101 lesson. And, of course, Theo was the character who suffered for that lesson.