The Mare

About The Mare

From the author of the National Book Award nominated Veronica comes Mary Gaitskill's most poignant and powerful work yet. This is the story of a Dominican girl, the white woman who introduces her to riding, and the horse who changes everything for her. Velveteen Vargas is eleven years old, a Fresh Air Fund kid from Brooklyn. Her host family is a couple in upstate New York: Ginger, a failed artist on the fringe of Alcoholics Anonymous, and Paul, an academic who wonders what it will mean to make a difference in such a contrived situation. The Mare illuminates the couples changing relationship with Velvet over the course of several years, as well as Velvets powerful encounter with the horses at the stable down the road, as Gaitskill weaves together Velvets vital inner-city community and the privileged country world of Ginger and Paul. The timeless story of a girl and a horse is joined with the timeless story of people from different races and socioeconomic backgrounds trying to meet one another honestly in a novel that is raw, striking, and completely original.