Most importantly, Seabiscuit's rise to fame was not a straight line, but a rocky road filled with enormous challenges. Hillenbrand brilliantly portrays a time in history, and the unique relationships and events that made Seabiscuit such a household name. It's also about Howard, Smith, and Pollard, Seabiscuit's close-knit team, and many others surrounding them. By 1938, the number one name in newspapers across the nation wasn't Roosevelt or Hitler or Mussolini it was Seabiscuit. Smith let Pollard meet Seabiscuit, Red offered the horse a sugar cube (the last thing in his pockets), and the man and horse immediately began to bond. After a terrible car crash in Detroit, Pollard and his agent, Yummy, dirty, injured, and out of cash, went to the local track where Yummy tried to get Red a job. He'd had some wins early on as a jockey, but those years seemed to be behind him. Born into a large, boisterous Irish family in Canada in 1909, Red, whose real name was Johnny, had been through years of scraping by as a jockey and part-time prizefighter, two physically punishing careers. At that time, a short, muscled redhead named Red Pollard was 12 years into working as a jockey, and his career seemed to be over. But Smith saw something in the horse, so he urged Howard to purchase him, which he did, for a bargain price. His legs looked somewhat deformed and weak, and he had a bad reputation for a wild temperament. Seabiscuit didn't look like a winner to most people. Howard was now a wealthy Californian, but he'd come from the East in 1903 as a penniless bicycle repairman and made his fortune by getting into automobiles at just the right time. He'd been in search of just the right horse for his employer, Charles Howard. Tom, who had learned about horses in the wild West and was known by the Indians there as the Lone Plainsman, didn't talk much, but he knew horses. In June 1936, a horse trainer named Tom Smith met a three-year-old colt named Seabiscuit. But, as usual, Hillenbrand's enormous talent for storytelling pulled me in from the first pages and kept me rapt. So why did I wait over ten years to finally read Seabiscuit while it waited patiently on my shelf? My only excuse is that I didn't think I'd be interested in reading about horse racing. My husband and I both thought Unbroken, her second novel, was fantastic and powerful, and he enjoyed Seabiscuit. She wrote her first book, Seabiscuit: An American Legend, while at her sickest and mostly bedridden and housebound. She has the same immune dysfunction disease I have, yet she has written and published two best-selling nonfiction books requiring years of research, interviews, and writing that were both turned into top movies.
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