This book deals with characters from different periods of time associated with a horse and paintings of that horse. You want to be with all of the characters in all of the time periods at once. You don’t want to leave anybody or any action behind as you skip into the next section to learn what’s happening with some someone else somewhere else. It’s gripping. The author is spectacular. 

The characters wrap around your heart in a way that makes this story of a horse in the time just before the American Civil War, the actual historic figures in the story, and the characters in all the timelines relevant to today’s headlines about prejudice, history, and critical race theory (also known as teaching the real parts of history, not just the sanitized versions).