Book Review: Dark Horse of Woodfield

Title: Dark Horse of Woodfield

Author: Florence P. Hightower

Date: 1962

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

ISBN: none

Length: 233 pages

Illustrations: black-and-white drawings by Joshua Tolford

Quote: "You know, Maggie, if we went into this together, and you earned fifty dollars at the horse show, and I earned fifty dollars selling butterflies, we could get her a good horse."

How old is Maggie? She's in high school; her best school friend is already at the boy-crazy stage of adolescence, but Maggie is still in the more empowering presexual stage, focussed on using her new near-adult height and reach to perfect her skills--in Maggie's case, horsemanship. Though her once wealthy family have sold off most of their surviving horses, Maggie still has show-quality Stardust to ride after school.

Well, although the story is set in 1933, it was published in 1962, and in 1962 it was simply not acceptable for a girl to succeed by being focussed. Antifeminist editors and teachers demanded a story about how Maggie learns that there are other things in life besides horses. If Maggie hadn't already known that, she wouldn't have been focussed on winning the prize to help buy a good horse for her favorite aunt, and the story wouldn't work at all, so this is not just another story about "How a Girl Who Had a Goal of Her Own Learned to Throw It Away and Be Satisfied with a Boyfriend." Hightower gave them perhaps the cleverest story on the contemporary market about how a brother and sister succeed through working together. Maggie wins her prize, her ten-year-old brother Bugsy earns his money, and their beloved Aunt Cinny gets a good horse...and the romantic happy ending contemporary publishers demanded.

Along the way they solve a family mystery, find long-missing valuable documents (in a place where it's hard to believe that nobody looked, but Hightower portrays eccentric and distracted adults well enough that, y'know, maaaybe...), save their brain-damaged domestic helper, and mend the rift that's forming between Maggie and her boy-crazy friend in a way that does not insult girl readers.

More than any of Hightower's other books, it's fair to say that this one is a feel-good family story rather than a mystery. It's funnier than some of her other stories, and in some ways even more realistic (despite the inevitable Very Happy Ending). One pleasing detail is that, although her aunt and her best friend are happily "in love" at the end of the story, and there's no reason to doubt that Maggie may become interested in boys later, Maggie stays delightfully ace.

Contemporary critics also raved over the vivid characterization of Maggie's and Bugsy's grandmother and her late husband and brother-in-law. Contemporary children's fiction had a tendency to focus on the child characters by killing off the elders, but Mrs. Armistead is active and healthy and the two men of her generation, though dead, have left their mark on the family. Reading or rereading stories about children as a middle-aged adult does provide a different view of the plot than a child reader would have. A surprising number of stories that purport to be for children really have more to say about the adults, usually their parents...Dark Horse of Woodfield keeps my attention on Maggie and Bugsy and Aunt Cinny, but I like the grandmother.