Battleship

Dorothy Ours''s Battleship tells the moving story of a tough little horse a gifted boy and a woman ahead of her time.The youngest jockey the smallest horse and an unconventional heiress who disliked publicizing herself. Together near Liverpool England they made a leap of faith on a spring day in 1938: overriding the jockey''s father trusting the boy and the horse that the British nicknamed the American pony to handle a race course that newspapers called Suicide Lane. There Battleship might become the first American racer to win England''s monumental century-old Grand National steeplechase. His rider Great Britain''s Bruce Hobbs was only 17 years old.Hobbs started life with an advantage: his father Reginald was a superb professional horseman. But Reg Hobbs also made extreme demands putting Bruce in situations that horrified the boy''s mother and sometimes terrified the child. Bruce had to decide just how brave he could stand to be.On the other side of the Atlantic the enigmatic Marion duPont grew up at the estate now known as James Madison''s Montpelier―the refuge of America''s Father of the Constitution. Rejecting her chance to be a debutante denied a corporate role because of her gender Marion chose a pursuit where horses spoke for her. Taking on the world''s toughest race she would leave her film star husband Randolph Scott a continent away and be pulled beyond her own control. With its reach from Lindbergh''s transatlantic flight to Cary Grant''s Hollywood Battleship is an epic tale of testing your true worth.