Lord of Misrule

Summary

Set on a run-down West Virginia racetrack in the 1970s, the novel follows a young woman, her drifter boyfriend, and the trainers, grooms, and gamblers who scheme around four claiming-race horses. Gordon's prose is dense, slangy, and rhythmically inventive, pulling readers into a closed world of small-time hustlers and animal lives. The book is celebrated for the texture and strangeness of its language as much as for its plot.