[close] Pursuing a lover who fled because of his alcoholism, the author wound up as a racetrack groom in Cincinnati. His lyrical, episodic narrative chronicles five years in horse racing (1979-84), with flashbacks to a ghastly childhood. Michael Klein (now sober) is a poet, and it shows in his unerring use of just the right words to describe, precisely yet colorfully, an out-of-control life that climaxed with being fired just before his Kentucky Derby-winning colt ran the Preakness. A moving memoir and a loving depiction of the byzantine track world. [close]