Ann Hagedorn Auerbach - Wild Ride: The Rise and Fall of Calumet Farm Inc., Americas Premier Racing Dynasty

The stunning collapse of Calumet. Enthrallingly toldits one part Dick Francis mystery novel, one part Den of Thieves. By the end of the book, youll wish there were more.

Andrew Serwer, Fortune

A fascinating tale, with a cast of characters worthy of Dickensor Runyan. [Auerbach] guides the reader through the tangled thicket of chicanery.

Carl Desens, Business Week

Straight out of the worlds of Dallas and Jackie Collins. Intrigue. Suspense. Greed.

The Boston Globe

[Auerbachs] Calumet Farm obituarysets the standard for investigative journalism in the sport of horse racing.

Neil Milbert, Chicago Tribune

With relentless skill, Auerbach traces the tragic story of the fall of a racing giant and the dispersal of a dynastic fortune. It is a tale almost beyond belief, as riveting as a Dick Francis novel. [Auerbach] presents a compelling narrative rich in juicy and previously unreported detail. She renders with clarity and understandable prose a portrait not only of what went wrong in the thoroughbred racing industry but also a primer for the kind of bank practices that first pumped up and then helped ruin the horse business.

Lucinda Fleeson, The Philadelphia Inquirer

This book blew me away. Behind the white fences and green pastures of a landmark institution, Ann Hagedorn Auerbach has found a tale of intrigue, corruption, and family strife worthy of a novelist. She reveals the inner workings of the entire thoroughbred industryfrom Kentucky to Abu Dhabi, from the breeding shed to the high-society auctionsand it is not a pretty sight. Fact by fact, deal by deal, horse by horse, her documentation of fraud is unassailably detailed. And the family saga woven through the book is a showcase for Auerbachs storytelling powers.

I read this book knowing very little about horse racing. Wild Ride has left me feeling like an expert. And it has made me feel very sorry for the horses.

Thomas Petzinger Jr., author of Oil & Honor: The Texaco-Pennzoil Wars

A great picaresque tale, hilarious and tragicand all true.

William Murray, author of The Wrong Horse:
An Odyssey Through the American Racing Scene

Wild Ride is a splendid job of reporting. Ms. Auerbach writes about the Calumet debacle with passion and keen insight.

Bill Barich, author of Laughing in the Hills

The fall of Calumet Farms is a dramatic story, and in Wild Ride a former Wall Street Journal reporter tells it exceptionally well. Race fans will love the book, of course, but so will anyone interested in recent cultural history, for Wild Ride is as much about 1980s greed as it is about horses.

Chris Goodrich, Los Angeles Times

Auerbach follows the money trail like a bloodhound[and] meticulously recreates the events that led to the demise of Calumet Farm.

Booklist (starred)

From the gripping opening chapter to the Hollywood-like ending, Wild Ride reads almost like fiction.

Lexington Herald-Leader

Journalist Auerbach untangles the spiderweb of financial machinations that enveloped, consumed, and ultimately destroyed one of the most famous horse-racing stables in the worldwell researched, fast paced. Highly recommended.

Library Journal

A compelling tale that takes the reader behind the scenes in Bluegrass country. Wild Ride is a fascinating true story, diligently researched and superbly told. Based on truth stranger than fiction, Wild Ride reads like a novel.

Julia Helgason, Dayton Daily News

Steeped in anecdote and well reported. Auerbach skillfully intertwines intrigue, corruption, and family strife with a sensitivity clearly denoting her affinity for thoroughbred racing. This is an account that should lasso the attention of more than just lovers of the worlds most utilitarian animal, but also those enthralled in the Great American Business.

Dean Narciso, The Columbus Dispatch

This highly researched book provides a spellbinding account of the history of Calumet Farm and its founders. Rich in history, this is a fascinating, fast-paced book about the recklessness of the 1980s, family secrets, colorful people, and a lifestyle about which most of us can just dream. From the intriguing first chapter straight through to the conclusion, the author displays a provocative and captivating style. Wild Ride is a winner coming out of the starting gateput it on your must-read list.

Glenda Eckert, Tulsa World

Takes us from the sedate, wealthy world of gentlemen and ladies into an ever-darkening hell of spiraling debt, questionable characters, and the twisted practice of killing noble animals to settle financial needs.

Herbert Swope, Palm Beach Post

This is the story of Calumets fallthrough greed, dishonesty, chicanery, and stupidityfrom the pinnacle of thoroughbred breeding and racing. It is a story told well by Auerbach. Her research is extensive, her sources varied, and her writing top-notch.

Rick Cushing, Courier-Journal , Louisville

In memory of my father, Dwight

And to John, Elizabeth,
Sarah, Gloria, and Phil

In the vast farmlands of the Bluegrass, night brings a deep and layered darkness that hovers over the land like a heavy fog. Faraway lights on rafters and spires appear closer than they are. Sounds, echoing from distant barns, are difficult to discern and seem to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. The backfiring of a pickup might be mistaken for a gunshot; the simple creaking of a barn door could be confused with an animals cry.

Alton Stone was accustomed to the terrain of a rural night and felt a certain comfort in the darkness. He had nothing to fear because in his years as a groom and even in his childhood on a farm in western Kentucky, nothing frightening had ever happened. His nerves were solid and his country instincts went well beyond his four years on the job. If there had been a sound that night that could have warned him, he would have known what to do.

But the darkness may have played a trick on Stone. There was nothing extraordinary that he could recall hearing, and no one else would ever come forward to report the wild, unnerving cries that must have emanated from the stallion barn at some point that night. No one would ever say they had heard the first bone crack.

It was a chilly night in mid-November of 1990, and Stone, a groom at Calumet Farm, was filling in for his friend Cowboy Kipp, the regular night watchman. From 6:00 P.M. to 6:00 A.M. he was to drive from barn to barn across the rolling acreage, checking on the welfare of two hundred thoroughbred horses, filling their water buckets, and dropping straw into their stalls. Stone remembered driving his red Ford Bronco slowly and without distraction along narrow, asphalt roads, the trucks headlights punching holes in the darkness ahead.

The routine was menial, but for the young Kentucky native it seemed as much a privilege as a job. Stone was raised on the legends of Whirlaway and Citation, two of Calumets many Kentucky Derby winners. Just as a boy growing up in New York might know the batting averages of legendary Yankees, boys in the Bluegrass knew the victories, pedigrees, and earnings of the champions who had thrived on Calumets nine hundred acres over the past sixty years.