1987 Honor - A Fine White Dust

I wasn’t sure that I wanted to write a review on Cynthia Rylant’s “A Fine White Dust.” I had picked it up (at a thrift store), read it, put the title and cover picture in the blog as a draft, and then just left it alone for a long time. Wasn’t it a good book? After all, it received the Newbery Honor prize. For one thing, it wasn’t my style of enjoyable reading. It was very “meaningful,” and felt a little disturbing to me. But as I told my kids when they were in school and sometimes resisted those sorts of book assignments, wanting to stay in the fast & fun novel category, I said that it was the “meaningful” books that they would remember. 

“A Fine White Dust” is a short little book, coming in at just over a hundred pages and can be read in under an hour. The subject is religion, but the theme of the book is about betrayal and a sensitive adolescent boy’s efforts to find meaning in life and work out his value system.

Pete is a spiritual boy who connects with that part of himself through going to church and feeling love for Jesus. It disturbs him that his parents are not church-goers, even though they put no obstacles in his way for attending, and that his best friend, Rufus, is an avowed atheist, even though Rufus doesn’t mind Pete being religious. In the middle of Pete’s growing concern over the state of their souls, the Preacher Man comes to town to hold a revival, consisting of evening evangelistical church services held over several days. 

The Preacher Man is a charismatic guy with a compelling and enthralling personality. Pete first sees him at the side of the road, hitchhiking, and he feels an instant reaction, imagining him to be an axe murderer. When Pete attends the church meeting and sees that the hitchhiker is actually the revival preacher, that intensity of feeling turns into an infatuation, a crush on the man. Pete throws his loyalty, affection, and sympathies to “The Man,” as he internally refers to him, going into full-blown hero worship, turning away from his best friend and his parents who create conflict with his new-born feelings. 

The Man, however, is a charlatan, and Pete himself is betrayed. The people who are real in his life, his parents and Rufus, are there to support him as he recovers from his personal trauma. Pete learns that he can’t take any of them for granted, and that they love him by choice, and that they will stick by him.

One thing I was reminded of, in reading this book, is that communication can be difficult, especially for a child or adolescent. Pete finds it hard to communicate his spiritual feelings and growth to his parents and Rufus. Parents should know or remember how shy and squirmy kids can be about initiating or responding to conversations about religion, inner feelings, sex, dreams and goals, and embarrassing things. One thing in the book that is alluded to, but never explained is some past and personal experience Pete’s parents had with church or religion. Perhaps if that had been a conversation they had been able to initiate with him, some of Pete’s problems might have been avoided.

A word of reassurance, even though the Preacher Man seems a little creepy in his attention to Pete, there is no overt reference to “that sort” of an inappropriate relationship.

1949 - King of the Wind

The author’s name, Marguerite Henry, is a familiar one. At a young age I read Brighty of the Grand Canyon, multiple times, and I was familiar with some of her other books. For some reason, “King of the Wind” had never crossed paths with me, so when I saw it in Goodwill, and that it had a Newbery sticker on it, I grabbed it.

King of the Wind is the story of the Godolphin Arabian, the origin of the line of racehorses that brought us Man ‘O War, Seabiscuit, and War Admiral. This book is a “historical novel,” part truth, part fiction, and begins with an introductory chapter of Man ‘O War’s match race against Sir Barton, the pride of Canada. After winning the race, Man ‘O War’s owner ponders the story of the Godolphin Arabian, the ancestor of this dynasty of racehorses, which began 200 years ago as the little orphaned colt, Sham.

Sham was born in the royal stables of the Sultan of Morocco, cared for by the little stableboy, Agba. Agba remembers the words an old storyteller told him when the mare, Sham's mother, was ready to foal, “When Allah created the horse, he said to the wind, ‘I will that a creature proceed from thee. Condense thyself.’ And the wind condensed itself, and the result was the horse.” Sure enough, the little colt grows up to be unusually fast. The Sultan decides to send a gift of six of his young steeds to the boy-king of France, Louis the XV, to better their line of horses and curry favor from France. Stableboys are sent with the animals, and Agba is chosen to accompany Sham.

Things go wrong from there. The horses arrive in terrible shape, the king and his advisors do not appreciate the fine-boned size of the Arabians, and Sham is set to work as a carthorse. None of his owners can manage him properly because of his high spirit, and so he is relentlessly passed on from one owner to the next, at the mercy of rough men and their ignorant handling. All the while, Agba stays with Sham, one way or another, caring for him as best he can, understanding him, and believing in him. 

Finally through a mishap during a breeding session at the Godolphin Stables, Sham covers the visiting mare instead of the chosen sire. And when the resulting colt proves himself unusually fast on the racetrack, Sham is brought out to finally live in the glory he was destined for, as the Godolphin Stallion, the sire of famous racehorses, that live on to this present day.

I enjoyed the book, and several of the scenes stuck with me, but towards the end, the rough owners began to blur together, and I just wanted to get to the end where Sham is finally recognized for the great horse he is. So there might have been a bit of skimming.

King of the Wind is a very nice horse book, and it will bring to mind Anna Sewel’s Black Beauty. But of course, when I finished it, I had to know; what was fact and what was fiction? So I looked it up. 

Agba, the little Moroccan stableboy was fiction. He is a well-placed device to give continuity to the story, and for SOMEONE to know Sham’s history during the book. Black Beauty didn’t need an Agba, since his life was told in first person.

Sham was actually foaled in Yemen, not Morocco, in about 1724. 

The breeding mishap was not as dramatic as the novel conjectures. In reality, Sham was used as a “teaser stallion,” a stud used to judge receptiveness of the mare. When Roxanna, the broodmare, rejected the intended sire, they went ahead and let Sham breed her. But the core of truth in the novel is plain; it was a serendipitous match that brought about a whole dynasty of racehorses.