by Julie Stielstra
LITTLE FOX BOOKS
ISBN 9781088055786 : $10.00 pbk; $4.99 ebook
Available from bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Ingram – or use the Contact Me link to order a signed copy.
A lovely review from Lisa Stewart, expert horsewoman and The Big Quiet, a memoir of her journey through childhood memories, Kansas, and Missouri, with her horse Chief… thanks, Lisa!
Scratched, a young adult novel, struck me through with a new awareness, followed by angst and sadness, as I learned about the lives of undocumented workers at horse racing tracks across America, and likely around the world. As only a perfectly structured and beautifully paced novel can convey, Scratched washes the reader onward with succinct prose borne by sharp, accurate images, telling the story of 15-year-old Luis. When not at school, Luis cares for his pre-school sister while his mother works tending racehorses. The threat of being reported to immigration authorities looms. His divorced mother’s need for male companionship and financial help in the form of a security officer places them all in danger of separation. Luis goes to school, cares for his little sister, and secretly earns extra money from an ostracized, elderly female trainer within the shadows of long rows of horse barns. Luis learns heartbreaking lessons about his absent father, the price of using of animals for gambling, and the practicality of working within a centuries-old system to make the best of it for the creatures. Stielstra’s own family history in the racing horse business grounds the story in fact and compassion. If you know anything about children, horses, or family dynamics after divorce, this book will touch you deeply while revealing a critically important perspective on those among us who are striving to survive.
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And from Laura C. Stevenson, author of the historical novel All Men Glad and Wise:
…a book that may come as a surprise to fans of Dick Francis. It’s about the people who clean stalls, water, feed, groom, and walk racehorses. Almost all the horses have papers; only a quarter of the horse-walkers have Green Cards. The side of racing that most fans know nothing about is a migrant community of over 1000 [at some tracks].
Luis Romero, the son of a disgraced jockey and an undocumented Mexican horse-walker, is part of this community at a track in the Chicago area. He, “Mami,” and his half-sister, Mariela, live in one of several dormitories on the backstretch. (The bathrooms are at the end of the hall; children don’t go there by themselves.) Mami gets up at 4 every morning and works most of the day; asthmatic Mariela goes to a sitter, and Luis goes to high school—when Security doesn’t make him miss the bus by stopping him from taking a shortcut. It’s a depressing life. It’s boring, except on the afternoons when he can hang out with his friend Mike. He gets a job working for a pill-popping trainer, only to find she can only pay him if the filly he’s grooming for her places in a race. And he’s resentful at the amount of baby-sitting he has to do for Mami, who is dating “a Security guy” with an SUV and enough money to take her out to fancy places. Everything is precarious—but then, Luis’s life has always been precarious. He just grumbles along until a catastrophe forces him to think about his goals, his little sister, and his future.
Horse fans will wish there were a bit more about horses in this book—though the filly Luis grooms is a sweetheart—but the point of horse-walkers’ lives isn’t horses; it’s survival. It isn’t until Luis faces a serious problem that he realizes that there might be more for him in life than just surviving.
This is a well-written, compelling book that everybody interested in racing should read.