Alyson Hagy’s BOLETO

“She had a good head.  There was nothing goat nosed or weak chinned about her.  Her jaw was a fine crescent that transitioned into a neat, clean mouth.  Her throat arced gracefully away from her jaw into a long, but not too long, neck.  She’d fill out moere in the neck as she aged, but he could already tell she’d never be too thick there.  And she’d never be spindly either.  He was surprised by the hue of her neck and face.  She was one of the deeper blood bays he’d laid eyes on in a long time.  He realized he had never asked Campion what color she was.  The question hadn’t even come to mind.  Color wasn’t important to him.  But her color — if she kept it — would make her one to remember.  Oxblood to old copper, that’s how he would describe it.”

Alyson Hagy knows words the way that Will Testerman knows horses, from the inside out.  She knows people, too.

Coming soon to our Recommended Reading column in the current issue: a brief but enthusiastic explanation of why you should read this new novel right away.  For another exhibit of evidence, see Alyson Hagy’s “Self Portrait as a Trailer Full of Mules” in Shenandoah 61, No. 1.


recent-meR. T. Smith has edited Shenandoah since 1995 and serves as Writer-in-Residence at Washington & Lee. His forthcoming books are Doves in Flight: 13 Fictions and Summoning Shades: New Poems, both due in 2017.