 Review of Colt Tailing Isle Author's Colt Tailing sensuous, steamy Melvyn H. Schreiber "By the Book" Galveston County Daily News October 3, 2004 "Colt Tailing," by Ute Carson, PublishAmerica Baltimore, 283 pages The story of this novel, in the form of a memoir-confession, is told in the first person by Clara, born in Silesia in 1940. The daughter and granddaughter of countesses, she was raised in a castle and enjoyed all the benefits of rank and wealth. But as World War II came to an end in 1945, Clara and her family fled the occupying Russian army to settle in Western Germany. Her father is killed in the war, her mother, Sophia, remarries but never finds a suitable mate, and Clara is left without the guidance and attention of either parent. But she has her Omi Maria, her beloved grandmother, and she becomes her model, her teacher and mentor, the dearest person to her. Clara loves horses. Familiar with them from early life, she loves to ride and becomes adept as a trainer later in her life. Young colts learn from their mothers, following them closely, their muzzles near the mare's tail. "All through my growing-up years, Omi Maria had been the lead mare I galloped after, trying to be strong and independent like she was." Clara lives through a life of poverty after leaving Silesia and grows to womanhood. She meets and falls in love with Alan Atkinson, an American, and they marry. He is a lawyer, she an ethnologist after they complete their training. They move to America, settle in Texas near Austin, where they raise and train horses and where they raise three daughters, miraculously conceived after many miscarriages. The story is told forward action and flashbacks, but the reader is never confused about time or events. Each daughter is unique and special to Clara and Alan in different ways. Each tries to establish her independence. "Rachel tried to shed me like a lizard its skin. She wanted a different mother, the mother next door, not the mother with a foreign accent and purple fingernail polish who rode horses." Clara is a lusty and intelligent woman, filled with the desire and need to fully savor life. She loves people, loves horses, loves adventure, loves nature and growing things. She loves her husband but is drawn to other men, carrying on an unconsummated affair with her daughter Jacqueline's exboyfriend, an affair that ultimately meant more to her than to him. Other men interest her, and she is affected by them, and tempted. Pedro, the keeper of the horses on the Atkinson's ranch, is attracted to her and she to him, and intimacy inevitably results. "My arms slid down, and my feet touched ground again. I had been ravished. It was what I had wanted, someone so interested, so obsessed with me that he would not let me go until he had me. It had never happened until tonight. Tobias, Kirk, even Alan, had hesitated when they wooed me. No one had ever swept me off my feet. Now I felt as free as when riding out on a clear, sunny morning. Joy shot through me like electricity, a thousand sparks, red, blue, yellow." The story takes us to Clara's middle 50s, when time works its inevitable effect upon her body but not upon her spirit. Her relationship with Alan is challenged and, ultimately, resolved. Carson writes with verve and energy and with insights derived from her own interesting life. Her use of active voice verbs propels the action and provides pace and excitement to the narrative. Here is her description of the birth of a foal: " ...a gush of fluid burst the amniotic sac, the newborn nose and front legs forging the way. The foal sucked in gasps of air with great slurping sounds. Within minutes, it struggled to stand. Its legs were tangled in the tough remains of the collapsed sac. Pedro gently pulled the rubbery scraps from around the legs and on the next try it was up, wobbly but on all fours. All the while Pegasus licked its damp coat. The foal's mane was matted like feathers glued together. The sun blinked through the cracks of the stall and as the light struck the mane, the strands sparkled like black gold." The writing is frankly sensuous, sometimes steamy, and always compelling and provocative as the author, who lives in Galveston and unfolds the life of her unbridled heroine.
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