One Good Horse [Paperback]

The subtitle on Tom Groneberg's "One Good Horse" is "Learning to Train and Trust a Horse."

But this is no guidebook for would-be horse-whisperers, equestrians or rodeo cowboys.

Sure, the story is built around Groneberg's relationship with a young horse. The ranching business is going to hell and Groneberg's wife has just learned she's pregnant when he finds an unbroken horse, in which he invests his money, his time and his sense of self.

But this memoir is so much more. It's the story of a man finding his place in the world. It's the story of a romantic dreamer putting down roots. It's a story of the inexplicable bonds between cowboys. It's a story about who we see when we look in the mirror. And it's the story of a father confronting some of his worst fears.

At least four stories unfold simultaneously in this plainspoken cowboy poet's story. Groneberg explores the latigo mythology that haunts him, the landscape of his western Montana community and his own heart (which might be inextricable), the birth of a son with Down Syndrome, and his passion for one good horse, which after a lot of thought, he names Teddy Blue.

The name isn't merely a poetic accident.

"One Good Horse" is marbled with the colorful life story of Teddy Blue Abbott, a true post-Civil War cowpoke from the heyday of Texas trail drives, Charlie Russell and Billy the Kid. In the British-born Abbott (who died in 1939 at age 78), the reader sees the ghost-mentor Groneberg never knew. He's the cowboy Chicago-born Groneberg always dreamed of being.

But Groneberg's more cowboy than a lot of five-generation Montana poseurs who are more hat than cow, and never knew anything else. For more than 10 years, he's been a cowboy because he chose the life, not because it chose him. And this highly personal chronicle - an extension of his earlier "The Secret Life of Cowboys" - he opens his heart in ways few cowboys ever do.

The painful revelation of his newborn son's incurable genetic disorder sparks his commitment to be as good a father as he can be. And for him, that even more important than being a good cowboy.

The layering of Teddy Blue Abbott's historic adventures with Groneberg's contemporary life is reminiscent of "Battlefield" (1992) by Peter Svenson, an artist who learned about life, love and farming when he unwittingly buys an old Civil War battleground. Svenson cross-cuts historic accounts of the combat and his more sedate skirmishes with seasons, farm equipment and the ghosts of history.

In both books, this contrapuntal structure adds depth and wisdom, but Groneberg goes a step or two beyond the mere juxtaposition of twin stories from separate centuries. This is not just a story of a love for the western landscape, but also a story about the landscape of a heart. It's not an epic story, but its themes are grand.

Tom Groneberg's One Good Horse presents several characters from disparate times and influences. Several stories emerge, and are woven in, out and around the authors desire to buy, break and train one good horse. Initially, the books cast of characters seem unrelated as they move in and out of the story. But ever so masterfully this author breathes each one to life, and a common theme begins to coalesce and shimmer. Within each characters circumstance, sandwiched between all things ordinary, life folds tiny, subtle cataclysms that alter perceptions and expectations mercilessly for good or ill. The author opens a window into his own soul and humbly invites us to pause to wonder at the blessings and the disappointments of our naive and so often narrow expectations of life and its most precious commodity: time well spent; time purposefully spent. In this earthy book I can almost smell the hay and grass and hear the horses snort and breathe as I recognize life's brevity and beauty in the colors of the Montanta Sky. Just as in his book, The Secret Life of Cowboys, Tom Groneberg's transparency and gentle vulnerability in sharing his desires, his moments of bliss or epiphany and more often than not - his heartache and disappointment were a genuine delight.

"Remember that life is not always fair, but it is good. Success is measured by the size of your heart," Tom Groneberg writes in his elegiac nonfiction followup to his successful memoir, The Secret Life of Cowboys. This time out, Mr. Groneberg writes of the eponymous equine, Blue, interspersing his tale of searching for that horse with his tales as husband and father to three young sons. In the process, he acquits himself not just as an extraordinary writer, but as an extraordinary father as well.

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