Lord of Misrule

by Jaimy Gordon

At the rock-bottom end of the sport of kings sits the ruthless and often violent world of cheap horse racing, where trainers and jockeys, grooms and hotwalkers, loan sharks and touts are all struggling to take an edge, or prove their luck, or just survive. Equal parts Nathanael West, Damon Runyon and Eudora Welty, Lord of Misrule follows five characters -- scarred and lonely dreamers in the American grain -- through a year and four races at Indian Mound Downs, downriver from Wheeling, West Virginia.
Horseman Tommy Hansel has a scheme to rescue his failing stable: He'll ship four unknown but ready horses to Indian Mound Downs, run them in cheap claiming races at long odds, and then get out fast before anyone notices. The problem is, at this rundown riverfront half-mile racetrack in the Northern Panhandle, everybody notices -- veteran groom Medicine Ed, Kidstuff the blacksmith, old lady "gyp" Deucey Gifford, stall superintendent Suitcase Smithers, eventually even the ruled-off "racetrack financier" Two-Tie and the ominous leading trainer, Joe Dale Bigg. But no one bothers to factor in Tommy Hansel's go-fer girlfriend, Maggie Koderer. Like the beautiful, used-up, tragic horses she comes to love, Maggie has just enough heart to wire everyone's flagging hopes back to the source of all luck.

(From Publisher).

Jaimy Gordon was born in Baltimore, took degrees from Antioch College and Brown University, and now teaches at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo and in the Prague Summer Program for Writers. She has been a Fellow of the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College. Her fourth novel, Lord of Misrule, won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2011. Her third novel, Bogeywoman, was a Los Angeles Times Best Book for 2000. Her second novel, She Drove Without Stopping, brought her an Academy-Institute Award from the American Institute of Arts and Letters. Other book publications include Shamp of the City-Solo (novel: McPherson & Company), The Bend, The Lip, The Kid: Reallife Stories (narrative poem: Sun Press), and Circumspections from an Equestrian Statue (novella: Burning Deck Press). She has also translated several works of Maria Beig from the German, most recently Hermine, An Animal Life. Her short story “A Night’s Work,” which shares several characters with Lord of Misrule, appeared in Best American Short Stories 1995.