Bloodlines - by Liza J Nicholas (Paperback)

About the Book

Bloodlines tells the story of a father's compelling love for horses, and how that passion orchestrated a family's movements, determined its status, and taught the author how passions that are not your own can nonetheless determine your destiny.

Book Synopsis

Bloodlines: A Story of Horses, Family, and Obsession is a love story--of a mother's love for her husband and a father's love for horses. Combining memoir and social history with a journey into the world of horses, Liza J. Nicholas reveals how a parent's passions can determine the destiny of an entire family.

In the darkest days of the Depression, and still in high school, Nicholas's father, Chuck, escaped his fate on a failing Iowa farm and joined a local horse trainer on the nationwide county fair circuit. From the moment he fell in with the strutting strangers who passed through town at fair time, his life trajectory was set. He was ensorcelled by the thoroughbred, the most royal of equines. And even as he and his wife had children of their own, the menagerie of grooms, jockeys, trainers, and gamblers who made up the world of horse racing became his true family.

Set in western Montana, the Nebraska Sandhills, rural Iowa, and beyond, Bloodlines tells the story of how one man's passions ripple through generations. It is the story of a family who followed their father across the country in search of the fastest horse, the best deal, the promise of a payday.

Review Quotes

"Beautifully written and impeccably researched, Liza Nicholas's Bloodlines portrays the nomadic and insular life of horse racing, as her family travels across America in the wake of her father, who trained and raced thoroughbreds. Nicholas's depiction of this world of bush boys, jockeys, and trainers in this American story of reinvention and restlessness is as powerful as her father's desire for the next great horse."--Caroline Patterson, author of The Stone Sister, winner of the 2021 High Plains Book Award

"In clear, honest, and eloquent prose, Liza Nicholas examines the double-edged and lasting inheritance of our parents' dreams and ambitions. Bloodlines avoids false nostalgia and maps the reality and sacrifice of recognizing and even accommodating those larger-than-life yet often invisible forces as we strive to shape our own narratives. Hard-earned empathy, compassion, and wisdom fill these pages."--Robert Stubblefield, director of the University of Montana Press

About the Author

Liza J. Nicholas is the author of Becoming Western: Stories of Culture and Identity in the Cowboy State (Nebraska, 2008) and coeditor of Imagining the Big Open: Nature, Identity, and Play in the New West.