On Swift Horses

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Pub Date 5 Nov 2019 | Archive Date 18 Feb 2021
4th Estate | Fourth Estate

Description

Set in 1950’s America at a time when people stopped looking west and started looking up: a breathtakingly beautiful debut novel of revolution, chance and the gambles we take with the human heart.

Muriel, newly married and newly orphaned, works as a waitress in a San Diego diner. As she pours coffee and empties ashtrays, she eavesdrops on her customers, the ex-jockeys and trainers of the Del Mar racetrack.
 
When she begins, secretly, to bet on the horses and, shockingly, to win, she feels strangely unready to share her good luck and its origins with her husband Lee.
 
Instead it is Lee’s brother, Julius, a thief and Korean War veteran – and someone she has only met once – whom she longs to tell, and who has struck a spark of promise and possibility inside her quietly ordered life.
 
Julius has found himself in Las Vegas, where his gift for gambling leads him to a job patrolling the boards above the casino tables, watching through the cigarette smoke for chancers and cheats.  There he meets Henry, a blackjack artist and a man who shares Julius’s passions, and his secrets. As tourists gather on roof tops to watch atomic clouds bloom in the desert, Henry and Julius's love burns in the shadows – until one night Henry is forced to flee.
 
Through the parks and plazas of Tijuana and the bars and beaches of San Diego, On Swift Horses mesmerisingly charts the journeys of Muriel and Julius on their separate quests for freedom, new horizons and love.

Set in 1950’s America at a time when people stopped looking west and started looking up: a breathtakingly beautiful debut novel of revolution, chance and the gambles we take with the...


Available Editions

EDITION Ebook
ISBN 9780008293987
PRICE £5.49 (GBP)
PAGES 352

Average rating from 12 members


Featured Reviews

A atmospheric novel a novel that draws you back into the fifties.Characters desperate searching for life.So well written so intense a book that draws you in keeps you turning the pages tense original.#netgalley #4thestatebooks.

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The period details were well done in that they weren't in your face or hokey and it definitely felt like it wasn't the modern world.

I wanted a bit more in terms of character tho. I'm not sure I ever felt like I really knew them.

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