SWEET GRASS - a Blue Mitchell Western - 1900
(WINNER OF A PINNACLE BOOK ACHIEVEMENT AWARD)
A pure-bred race horse from Nebraska and a worn-out cowboy travel east on a private rail car. The horse is to be delivered to August Belmont, Jr.'s stable in New York for the summer race card. Along the journey, Blue Mitchell meets with a man he'd read about in the racing papers his boss kept around the ranch; Willie Simms, champion jockey of 1894, and an African American.
Mr. Simms rides for different stables but most often works for Mr. Belmont. Despite the differences, color and size being the obvious disparities, Blue and Willie Simms become uncertain friends in the battle to keep the young race colt from being ruined through deceitful training before the colt's first race.
Blue experiences the ocean for the first time in his life, and he hopes for a miracle to happen; that he will meet up with his son. A boy he did not know he'd sired until a few years ago.
The survival of the colt, the peculiar friendship between two men brought together by a common skill with horses, and the meeting of father and son make for a suspenseful tale wound around the facts of Willie Simms and his 'crouch' seat of riding a Thoroughbred that made history.
(WINNER OF A PINNACLE BOOK ACHIEVEMENT AWARD)
A pure-bred race horse from Nebraska and a worn-out cowboy travel east on a private rail car. The horse is to be delivered to August Belmont, Jr.'s stable in New York for the summer race card. Along the journey, Blue Mitchell meets with a man he'd read about in the racing papers his boss kept around the ranch; Willie Simms, champion jockey of 1894, and an African American.
Mr. Simms rides for different stables but most often works for Mr. Belmont. Despite the differences, color and size being the obvious disparities, Blue and Willie Simms become uncertain friends in the battle to keep the young race colt from being ruined through deceitful training before the colt's first race.
Blue experiences the ocean for the first time in his life, and he hopes for a miracle to happen; that he will meet up with his son. A boy he did not know he'd sired until a few years ago.
The survival of the colt, the peculiar friendship between two men brought together by a common skill with horses, and the meeting of father and son make for a suspenseful tale wound around the facts of Willie Simms and his 'crouch' seat of riding a Thoroughbred that made history.