The Year of the Horses: A Memoir
A Memoir
by Courtney Maum
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Pub Date May 03 2022 | Archive Date Apr 30 2022
Tin House | Tin House Books
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Description
Sharp, heartfelt, and cathartic, The Year of the Horses captures a woman’s journey out of depression and the horses that guide her, physically and emotionally, on a new path forward.
At the age of thirty-seven, Courtney Maum finds herself in an indoor arena in Connecticut, moments away from stepping back into the saddle. For her, this is not just a riding lesson, but a last-ditch attempt to pull herself back from the brink even though riding is a relic from the past she walked away from. She hasn’t been on or near a horse in over thirty years.
Although Maum does know what depression looks like, she finds herself refusing to admit, at this point in her life, that it could look like her: a woman with a privileged past, a mortgage, a husband, a healthy child, and a published novel. That she feels sadness is undeniable, but she feels no right to claim it. And when both therapy and medication fail, Courtney returns to her childhood passion of horseback riding as a way to recover the joy and fearlessness she once had access to as a young girl. As she finds her way, once again, through the world of contemporary horseback riding—Courtney becomes reacquainted with herself not only as a rider but as a mother, wife, daughter, writer, and woman.
Alternating timelines and braided with historical portraits of women and horses alongside history’s attempts to tame both parties, The Year of the Horses is an inspiring love letter to the power of animals—and humans—to heal the mind and the heart.
About the Author:
Courtney Maum is the author of the novels Costalegre; Touch; and I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You; and a guide for writers, Before and After the Book Deal. Her writing and essays have been widely published in such outlets as The New York Times; O, the Oprah Magazine; Interview Magazine; and Modern Loss. She lives in Litchfield County, Connecticut, where she founded the learning collaborative The Cabins.
Advance Praise
"Tender, honest, and beautifully written." - Kate Baer, #1 Bestselling author of What Kind Of Woman
"Searing, lucid, tender and wise, The Year of the Horses is a moving, beautifully-written interrogation into a complicated, privileged childhood and its aftermath. Courtney Maum weaves together the sensory, tactile world of horses and their capacity to heal us, along with one of the most illuminating and powerful depictions of depression I have ever read. Oh, and it’s also a page-turner. I tore through it with immense pleasure." - Dani Shapiro
"Gorgeously written, wry but loving, heartbreaking and, most of all, roving. . . . The Year of the Horses is a memoir of power and beauty and pain that moves across the world like the beautiful horses that carry it." - Lisa Taddeo, author of Animal
"Courtney Maum dives into her own life with the same fearlessness and honesty that she brings to her fiction. The Year of the Horses is a beautiful, unflinching exploration of darkness and self-forgiveness, terror and tenderness." - Hala Alyan, author of Salt Houses
"If, like me at age 50, you have a hankering to resume riding again (never mind that it’s been 34 years), this is the book for you. Courtney will show you her way to this particular form of personal salvation." - Sally Mann, author of Hold Still
"Courney Maum writes not from an ideal of who she should be but as she is; it lacks performative overtones or those typical bits where the reader is assured the author is self-aware. No, it’s nothing like that—The Year of the Horses sings like the world actually feels, offering readers permission to be who we are, written by one of the best, a writer’s writer, with a maturity that reveals her decades long devotion to her craft." - Holly Whitaker, author of Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol
"The concept of finding safety in a dangerous sport won’t make sense to everyone, but the way that Courtney found meaning and magic in horses resonates with me. As a polo player, I loved the sometimes laugh-out-loud journey of an adult trying against all odds to learn the sport of kings. This is a great memoir that somehow manages to be both deeply moving, and funny." - Kareem Rosser, author of Crossing the Line: A Fearless Team of Brothers and the Sport That Changed Their Lives Forever
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781953534156 |
| PRICE | $27.95 (USD) |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Sarah P, Reviewer
Sometimes a book finds you and at a time when you most need it. Such was the case when I came across Courtney Maum’s The Year of the Horses. I’m a crazy horse woman and the cover and title immediately screamed “read me”. But it was so much more than that.
The Year of the Horses: A Memoir is Maum’s story of finding her way out of depression by revisiting her childhood love of horses and riding. Maum explores the powerful way horses can heal and have for many.
I devoured this and could not get enough of Maum’s talent of storytelling, her prose and honest words. Reading Maum’s words was a cathartic experience, she was putting my feelings onto paper that I have had a hard time defining myself: “For so long, I had been thinking of my child as a worthy time commitment that nevertheless ate into my time. How and when I wrote, socialized, traveled; it all depended on what was happening with my daughter. But I was slowly realizing that I could incorporate my child inside my joys, that if I showed her how to participate in the things I cared about, she might care about them too.” Her reflections on the roles of being a wife and a mother are raw and honest.
From Lisa Frank trapper keepers to Blue Hors Matiné to the political climate in the Trump era to “shoulders like a Queen, hips like a whore” during riding lessons... I felt a kinship with a woman I’ve never met. This is an honest and moving memoir that will resonate with women, mothers, and animal lovers.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for approving my ARC request.
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