Inheritance of Horses by Brown Thrasher Books - Historical Fiction Novel for Horse Lovers | Perfect for Book Clubs, Gifts & Equestrian Enthusiasts
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Product Description
Reconciliation and remembering are the forces at work in Inheritance of Horses. In these essays, James Kilgo seeks the common ground between his roles as a man, as husband and father, and as heir to his family legacy. Pausing at mid-life to make an eloquent, understated stand against our era's rootlessness, he honors friendship, kinship, nature, and tradition.In the opening section, Kilgo focuses on the tension between his need for ritualistic male camaraderie and his familial obligations. Searching the woods for arrowheads, sitting around the dinner table at a hunting lodge, or careening down an abandoned logging road in a pickup, he seems ever-prone to the intrusions of domesticity and civilization: a sudden memory of miring the family station wagon in the sand on a beach trip, an encounter with a couple on their sixtieth wedding anniversary, a stream littered with trash and stocked with overbred hatchery trout.Restlessness and responsibility converge and again clash in the second series of essays, in which domestic themes are explored in settings that range from Kilgo's own living room to Yellowstone Park and the deep waters off the Virgin Islands. Through such images as a hornet's nest, a gale-force storm, a grizzly bear, and a marlin, Kilgo gauges the strengths and vulnerabilities of his family and moves toward an existence that is part of, not apart from, the women in his life.The long title essay composes the book's final section. Reading through a cache of letters exchanged between his two grandfathers, Kilgo recovers and revises his memories of them. What he learns of their open, passionate friendship reveals an essentially feminine aspect of their patriarchal natures, enriching, but also confusing, Kilgo's earlier understanding of who they were. As some of the more unhappy or unpleasant details of his grandfathers' lives come to light, they first heighten, then assuage, Kilgo's ambivalence about a family heritage built as much on myth as on truth.The manner in which Kilgo makes such intensely personal concerns so broadly relevant accentuates what might be called the "told," rather than the "written," quality of Inheritance of Horses. He is foremost a storyteller, working in a style that is classically southern in its pacing and its feel for the land, but all his own in its restrained humor and lack of self-absorption. Guided by a storyteller's respect for common people and common feelings, Kilgo never prescribes or moralizes but rather brings us to places where principled choices can be made about what we need and value most in our lives.
Customer Reviews
INHERITANCE OF HORSES, by James Kilgo.This 1994 book is the third essay collection I've read by the late James Kilgo, who is perhaps best known for his first one, Deep Enough for Ivorybills (Brown Thrasher Books). That book was primarily about his hunting, fishing and birding experiences both as a boy and as a man. And there is more of that here too. "According to Hemingway" tells of a deep sea fishing trip in the Caribbean and remembering what Hemingway wrote about his time doing the same. "Indian Givers" talks more of hunting, but also about looking for arrowheads and other pieces of history, again, as both boy and man. "A Gift from the Bear" is about camping trips to Yellowstone with his son, John, hoping to sight a grizzly bear, and also to fish. But the two cornerstone pieces of this collection, at least in my estimation, are the ones about his grandfathers. "Taken by Storm" is about his maternal grandfather, Bob "Doc" Lawton, who was bedridden for much of his life from various illnesses and ailments, and yet continued to try to make the most of his life. Doc figures largely too in the title piece, last in the collection, "Inheritance of Horses." In it, Kilgo tries valiantly to unravel the puzzle that was his paternal grandfather and namesake, Jim Kilgo, who died when the author was very young. A complex riddle of a man, 'Papa' continued to loom large in Kilgo's imagination for the rest of his life. Kilgo's two grandfathers were close friends their whole lives. Indeed, the letters between the two men, which Kilgo studies almost religiously, show a closeness that was rare and mysterious, especially for the times in which they were written, the 1920s and 30s. Kilgo sees a disciple-like relationship in Papa's love and respect for a near Christ-like Doc, but also speculates on the possibility of a repressed homosexual attraction. He also wonders about an alleged affair that Papa engaged in while still a relatively young man that resulted in a polite and formal separate bedroom arrangement between him and his wife for the rest of their marriage.Kilgo's writings are unique in the way he looks closely at his natural surroundings, using his hunting and fishing trips to make sense of what we are all here for. His observations touch on the deeply personal things we all think about but rarely speak of - nature, family, life and death. Kilgo died a dozen years ago from cancer. But his words live on in these essays. He was a damn fine writer. My highest recommendation.- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER
