The Winter Horses
Philip Kerr, il. Eva Kolenko (cover)
2014, Alfred A. Knopf, imprint of Random House
(paperback is Ember imprint of RH)
“Oh, the Przewalski’s
are strong, sir. None stronger. And they’re clever, too. Resourceful. Cunning,
even.”
In late 1941, zookeeper Maxim Borisovich Melknik is the only
worker left at the State Steppe Nature Reserve of the Ukraine, or
Askaniya-Nova. The Germans, busy expanding their eastern front, have arrived in
the form of a group of SS led by Captain Grenzmann. Maxim, who recalls the
German founder of Askaniya-Nova with great fondness and is not the most
enthusiastic of Communists, is prepared to give Grenzmann and his men the
benefit of the doubt. Until they start
eating his animals.
The reserve consists of a zoo and a large wildlife preserve;
the crown jewel of this remote Soviet park is the herd of Przewalski
horses. Grenzmann, a restless German,
begins almost immediately to search for a way to eradicate these “inferior”
horses. He’s largely successful, but a breeding pair (Temukin and Borte) escapes
and the increasingly obsessed Nazi launches a hunt for the dangerously fertile
horses.
At the same time, a member of another dangerously inferior
race is hiding out at the reserve.
Kalinka, a Jewish girl who’d barely escaped the mass murder of her
family, is making the reserve one more stop in her endless journey of escape:
“Three uncles, three
aunts, my brothers, my sisters, my grandparents, my great-grandmother, and all
my cousins. Everyone had to gather in the botanical gardens in our city. Which
is where it happened. I mean, where they and all the others were killed. Not
just my family. But every family. At least, every family that was Jewish.
Fifteen or twenty thousand people. I’m not sure.”
Kalinka is charmed by her encounters with the herds of
Przewalski, and horrified when the Germans machine-gun most of them. But that
horror is only the latest in her histories of grief and death, and she almost
immediately has to worry about surviving a Russian winter.
Maxim and his dog, a Borzoi/Russian Wolfhound named Taras,
help Kalinka survive a blizzard, but she can’t stay there. Grenzmann’s passion
to kill those last horses leads him straight to Kalinka, who must run again.
Przewalski horses are, as the book admits, wild. You do not
ride them, you do not halter or pet them. They’re closer to zebras than to
ponies. During the first half of the book, the horses are shown to be smart and
insightful and a little more accepting of handling than you’d expect, which the
humans note and chalk up to their extreme need.
But in the second half of the book, as Kalinka sets out alone into the
snowy landscape with only the horses and Taras for company, the animals become
the drivers of the action and all but speak to one another. Kalinka, dependent
on the horses for warmth at the very least, is briefly the dependent of the
animals.
With jaws bared
viciously, the first wolf – a big male – launched himself like a streak of
snarling gray lightning at the girl, only to be met by a perfectly judged
double kick from Temujin as both the stallion’s rear hooves lashed out in
unison and connected very solidly with the wolf’s body
Despite the hostility of the wolves (historically symbolic
of the Nazis), the worst, most enduring dangers come from humans. For a time, all the humans they encounter are
brutal monsters.
An interesting book, blending realism and a WWII legend
nicely.
About the Author
Kerr is best known for a series of spy thrillers, but has also written other children's books under the name P.B. Kerr.
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