A Word About Horses, Many More Words About the Author

Any book with the word horse in the title and a picture of an equine on the cover is bound to get my attention. It is a little bit difficult, however, to know what to make of “Horsekeeping,” a book recently published by Roxanne Bok. It turns out the book is not a how-to manual. Rather it is a memoir; a slice of the author’s life, filled with stories from her childhood, reflections on parenting and marriage and descriptions of a somewhat gilded life, lived part-time in the country. That is where the horse-keeping comes in. Bok and her husband, Scott, residents and landowners in Salisbury, CT, decide to buy the rundown Arabian horse breeding farm that abuts their property. At first the driving impulse behind this decision is to protect the land from “…the bad guys (developers and neighbors who sell to developers).” So, she writes, “Some of our neighbors had counted on us to rescue our road from the tyranny of the developer.” “Can you imagine two new houses, one sitting right here along the edge of our path?” Scott asks her. The Boks have a “lovely” “two-hundred-year-old colonial” situated on a beautiful country lane and they’re determined not to have it spoiled. Of course, the only way to ensure this is to buy the property. The husband-wife team’s desire to live in a pastoral wonderland extends to the author’s fantasies about farm life. She imagines all the goodness that rubbing noses with a variety of animals will impart to her two children, city kids from Monday to Friday. In the two years that go by between first hearing that the property is on the market and finally coming to terms with the seller, the idea of keeping the property as a horse-oriented business has taken full hold in the author’s imagination. It will be a boarding facility, each member of the family will learn to ride, they will own their own horses, they’ll all enjoy hacks in the countryside and the kids will spend weekends mucking out stalls and learning the value of honest work and the satisfaction of caring for animals. Bok is forthright about where her fantasies ended and reality intruded. For one thing, her husband was an unwilling convert to the horsey-life, and though Bok and her trainer gift him with his very own mount, by book’s end, he still prefers his bicycle for touring country lanes. It is a brave person who writes a memoir. For it to be meaningful to the reader, the author must be willing to reveal a fair amount of personal material. In this, Bok is fearless. It is hard not to admire her candor. Conversations and arguments with her husband about time management, money and child rearing, all ring true. As a full-time mom, this is her world and she brings it vividly to life. Her observations, first and foremost about herself, are often quite astute. She is not quite so sure-footed when it comes to the horse world. She starts the enterprise as a neophyte. Her early acumen seems to be mostly for spending money, which is just as well, for surely the decision to take a run-down farm and turn it into an appealing boarding stable with a trainer in residence requires deep pockets. Bok’s enthusiasm for everything equine is endearing. Her “I’m spending all this money — so I should be first in your attentions” attitude with her trainer is less so. But since she’s the first to admit that she all too often feels out of her depth, she should be forgiven. “Horsekeeping” does not have much to teach a reader with any horse sense. It could be a cautionary tale for other monied weekenders with a hankering to play a scene out of Trollope. Mostly, it is a story about a woman, who is trying to realize a dream, and however awkwardly she goes about it, the reader knows she intuitively feels what Churchill said, “There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.” Roxanne Bok will be signing copies of “Horsekeeping” at Johnnycake Books at 12 Academy St., in Salisbury, Oct. 22, from 5 to 7 p.m. For information, call 860-435-6677.