Come to the X

Come to the X starts with an earthquake and ends with a demolition. The author Julia Wendell is fearless in the irons, and she writes with a merciful and elegant pen about the old military sport of three day eventing in a modern era with its heroes, its clowns, its suffering dreams, and especially, its ghosts. Hers is a restless gambit of big distance, risky terrain, stop watches, even a chainsaw opera in South Carolina. Wendell is so like Kerouac, except the beast under her is a sentient one. It bites. It kicks. It sends her crashing to the ground. And the characters are real too, the living ones and the ones who arent living anymore. In between is the elusive canter, in all its guises, at times extended, at times collected, but never quite reaching an elastic middle, despite her hands, heels, curses, and gentle urgings.