The Hanging in the Foal Barn

One of the first things a catalog librarian looks at in a new arrival to the library is the Cataloging in Publication information. The CIP gives the book's name and author, a description of the book as an object (paperback, alkaline paper), and a list of descriptors of the book's content. This part is sort of slippery when it comes to fiction; I mean, what is fiction every truly *about*? But sitting there on the copyright page of Susan Starr Richards' first collection of stories is the CIP block, confident in its descriptive powers: "Kentucky" is the first word used to describe it, and the second one is "Horses."

Most of the stories in The Hanging in the Foaling Barn depict life among horses, in particular among racing horses raised on Kentucky ranches. The arresting title story, for instance, takes place in a foaling barn, which is a place where someone (a suicidal ex-jockey, in this case) must stay awake throughout the night to assist in the birth of a new horse. "Gawain and the Horsewoman" reads like a fairy tale, some ancient Celtic thing filled with pure-white horses and, well, a character named Gawain; it's a paean to the sometimes otherworldly beauty of horses. And "The Murderer, the Pony, and Miss Brown to You" is amusing and touching for the way it describes the relationship between an ornery mare and her daughter with as much nuance as you'd expect from a relationship between two human beings.

Indeed, Richards has that strange way—strange, that is, to us unhorsey people—of talking about horses as though they *are* people. "Like a lot of overprotected children," she writes of a filly much loved by her mother, "she grew up to be sensitive, a worrier, always a little bewildered, as if she were still expecting her mother to tell her what to do." She imbues her equine characters with more humanity than some of the human ones, even: one of her characters is referred to only as "the murderer" (he once shot a hunter on his farm), and a couple of stories contain wives who are never given names.

But as fascinating as the horses’ humanness is Richards' depiction of their wildness, even as they're being bought and sold, bred and raced, by people who call themselves their owners. Take this scene where Joel, the owner of the "evil" Miss Brown to You, tries to force and cajole Miss Brown's daughter Soft Spot onto his horse trailer. "He'd tried chucking pieces of gravel at her. He'd tried a broom. He'd tried feed, and a blindfold. Nothing worked. What worked, finally, was desperation--he put his arms around her neck and begged her to go in the trailer, telling her sincerely that he loved her, that he'd never asked her to do anything dangerous, and he wasn't this time either."

The stories in Richards' collection are at their loveliest, and strongest, when their characters slip into the wild world around them and become a part of nature. In "The Ape in the Face," an otherwise strange and somewhat strained story about a caretaker of a historical house who used to be a singer, the woman wishes her singing voice could live in the wild. "She'd thought of that this morning, when she'd awakened with troops of warblers singing in her tiny backyard forest. She'd wished she could've been one of them, singing with her whole soul, invisible in the tops of trees." Another story, "Man Walking," contains a line about a couple lying down in an overgrown cemetery that's so good it's shivery: "They lay together in the great grave of the world."

A few of these stories are not about horses at all. "The Screened Porch" is a dreamy tale of a family of sisters and their reaction to the young husband one of the girls brings home one day, like an offering. "Clarence Cummins and the Semi-Permanent Loan" is droll and wise, the humorous story of a pony cart that gets stolen and returned. "Magic Lantern," probably the weakest story in the collection, is about the very young lover of a recently deceased famous photographer. It's weak because it feels self-consciously arty. It's too broken in, if you'll pardon the metaphor, too "pettified," as the people in Richards' book call horses that are trusting and sweet and well under control. No, the best thing here are the horse stories, with their wildness and unpredictability, their natural grace.