Kathryn Scanlan’s Kick the Latch (2022) is an engaging compression of one woman’s life in the Midwest horse racing circuit. Based on transcribed interviews with the subject, Sonia, Scanlan has taken this material and crafted a series of vignettes that take in the obvious elements of horses and racing, for good or bad, but also touch on her failed relationships, personal traumas, and life for women in this domain.

Sonia has tales to tell and her no-nonsense delivery ranges widely, taking in characters from the circuit, horses she’s known, her rising stature in the industry. But abusive partners and a gunpoint rape (“it was bad, but anyway, I survived”) add both strength and resilience to her account. And it’s an telling that slathers impressionistic strokes across the years, following Sonia’s life from young girl to leaving the business, even if it never leaves her.

What Scanlan reveals, through Sonia’s telling, is a picture of an enclosed world, a microcosm with its own lingo, where competition is cut-throat but the people are ultimately still there for each other, and where horses are at the heart of the community. It’s an enlightening eye on the racing industry, especially for those who experience little other than race days, as we see how extensive it really is, with its roll call of trainers, groomers, farriers, veterinarians, and more, all travelling from course to course, week to week. It doesn’t shy away from approaching the less savoury aspects of the business, be that euthanizing horses or the pill abuse and alcoholism rife among jockeys (“When they say they’re hungry, you don’t give them money. You take them to get a bite instead.”).

I found it an exhilarating read, racing through its pages, eager for the finish line. Horses are centred in Sonia’s life (“You spend hours and hours with a horse – you fall in love with them. They run their hearts out for you.”) and her life’s little without the horses that have come and gone. And in this industry, horses come and go as they are bought and sold, sadly die, or are put to pasture. But they are loved, and even if the homestretch considers home truths, they’re the concerns of the circuit, not those outside.