Call It Horses

Winner of the 2019 Dzanc Prize for Fiction Set in small-town West Virginia in the twilight of the eighties, Call It Horses tells the story of three womenniece, aunt, and stowawayand an improbable road trip. Frankie is an orphan (or a reluctant wife). Mave is an autodidact (or the town pariah). Nan is an artist (or the town whore). Each separately haunted, Frankie, Mave, and Nanwith a hound in towset out in an Oldsmobile Royale for Abiqui and the desert of Georgia OKeeffe, seeking an escape from everything theyve known. Frankie records the journey in letters to her aunt Maves dead lover, a linguist named Ruth, sketching out her troubled life and her complicated relationship with Mave, who became her guardian when Frankie was orphaned at sixteen. Slowly, one letter at a time, Frankie exposes the ruins of herself and her fellow passengers: things that chase them, that died too soon, that never lived. With lush prose and brutal empathy, Frankie tells Ruthand herselfthe story of liminality experienced by a woman standing just outside of motherhood, fulfillment, and love.