Daylight Second
Kelly Ana Morey
‘Phar Lap first, daylight second.’ That’s what
the race callers would say when Phar Lap crossed the finished line lengths
ahead of the next horse.
Born
in Timaru on 4 October 1926, Phar Lap’s racing career would become legendary – after a slow start, he won 57
races including the Melbourne Cup two Cox Plates and the Agua Caliente Handicap,
with the largest prize money offered in Northern America at the time.
Phar
Lap captured the imagination of the public of a nation during the tough years
of the Depression, and became a national icon in Australia and New Zealand. While Phar Lap’s brief life was the stuff of legend,
the cause of his death remains a mystery. Was it colic or was it the result of
arsenic poisoning? The debate goes
on.
Daylight Second is also the title of a new novel by one of New Zealand's most audacious writers, Kelly Ana Morey. Part richly imagined biography, part portrait of two marriages, Daylight Second is also the story of the people who knew the champion race horse as Bobbie; his trainer Harry Telford and beloved strapper Tommy Woodcock, and the two very different women who would become their wives.
Daylight
Second brings to
life the excitement of the track, the highs and lows of the racing game, and
the challenges faced by urban working-class Australians between the wars. It is
storytelling at its very best.
Kelly Ana Morey is an
award-winning writer of both fiction and non-fiction. Her first novel Bloom won
the 2003 Hubert Church (New Zealand) first novel prize and her second Grace
is Gone was a finalist in the Kiriyama Award for Fiction (USA) in 2004. She
was the recipient of the inaugural Janet Frame Award for Fiction in
2005. Daylight Second is her fifth novel. She lives in New Zealand and
always has a thoroughbred mare or two in the paddocks at home.
No comments:
Post a Comment