Bloodlines: A Story of Horses, Family, and Obsession is a love story—of a mother’s love for her husband and a father’s love for horses. Combining memoir and social history with a journey into the world of horses, Liza J. Nicholas reveals how a parent’s passions can determine the destiny of an entire family.

In the darkest days of the Depression, and still in high school, Nicholas’s father, Chuck, escaped his fate on a failing Iowa farm and joined a local horse trainer on the nationwide county fair circuit. From the moment he fell in with the strutting strangers who passed through town at fair time, his life trajectory was set. He was ensorcelled by the thoroughbred, the most royal of equines. And even as he and his wife had children of their own, the menagerie of grooms, jockeys, trainers, and gamblers who made up the world of horse racing became his true family.

Set in western Montana, the Nebraska Sandhills, rural Iowa, and beyond, Bloodlines tells the story of how one man’s passions ripple through generations. It is the story of a family who followed their father across the country in search of the fastest horse, the best deal, the promise of a payday.