John Henry by Steve HaskinMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
As I work my way through the Thoroughbred Legends series, I have found that many of the stories were quite similar. The horses have been superstars, obviously, and many, especially the more modern horses, had similar stories. Those stories revolve around breeding, training, racing, and retiring to stud. And a large majority of these books cover the owners, breeders, and horsemen, and after reading a few of the books in the series, these people and these topics kind of run together. It takes a good writer and a novel subject to make a book in this series stand out, and “John Henry” stands out.
The writing itself is OK. The way the author chose to tell John Henry’s story was distinct for this series, and that made this one more interesting. The author foreshadows the future a number of times as you read through this short (200 page) book. And he is able to use many more modern sources like articles from Sports Illustrated for material, strangely including an evaluation of John Henry by a psychic. This was written well, and I’d look forward to reading more by Haskin, but I already read the one other in this series.
What really makes this book interesting in the world of race horse books is the subject. John Henry was one of the more recent subjects in the series, and there are many sources available and most of the principals were still alive when the book was written. John Henry had a very different life than most of the horse superstars. He was unwanted at first. He was passed around quite a few owners, including a dog groomer. He was a gelding who raced until he was 9, and likely had more races than other of the superstars. And he seems to have lost more than the others – no perfect record here, nowhere near.
Many of the people in this book are characters right out of Central Casting. The aforementioned first owner was a dog groomer. The owner for most of John Henry’s life was a hard scrabble, street wise business man who made his money, after trying many things, importing Japanese bicycles. He always had a quip, and I laughed out loud a few times while reading. The horsemen all seemed to be characters, mostly portrayed here as occasionally flawed good guys. Many of the people covered here could carry a book by themselves. The biggest character is John Henry. He is mean and smart, a potent combination for stories. You keep reading about how the horse destroyed dozens of feed buckets or squeezed someone into a corner, and how people responded. There were many mostly humorous stories.
I have a personal interest in this book as well. Of all the 24(?) racehorse subjects in the Thoroughbred Legends series, the only horse I ever saw in person was John Henry, at the Kentucky Horse Park a couple decades ago. Still mean, still smart, and still the source of stories. Good book on a great topic, and probably the book in the Thoroughbred Legends series I’m most likely to remember the longest.
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