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.
Jaimy Gordon's novel begins and ends at a backwards race track in early-1970s West Virginia, where horse trainer Tommy Hansel dreams up a scam. He'll run four horses in claiming races at long odds and get out before anyone realizes how good his horses are.
But at a track as small as Indian Mound Downs, where everyone knows everybody's business, Hansel's hopes are quickly dashed.
Then his luminous girlfriend, Maggie, appears, drawing the eye of everyone, including sadistic local mafioso Joe Dale Bigg – a man intent on teaching Hansel a lesson. Even though Maggie finds herself with an unexpected protector in family gangster Two-Tie, even he can't protect her from her own dreams.
