Raising Courageous

Welcome to Raising Courageous, Book 2 of the exciting series by Glenn Stewart.

Chasing Sally, book 1 was released in 2022, with Loving Isabel, book 3 of the trilogy published in 2024.

The Chasing Sally-trilogy continues in Raising Courageous when a stranger arrives from far away with an incredible story, and a beautiful Chestnut Thoroughbred. The stranger is soon followed by Soviet Chairman Stalin's thugs, who after 7 quiet years return in order to stop the offspring of George Harrison's legendary mare Lucy from racing against them.

16-year-old Tony hopes to be the first Black jockey to compete in the Kentucky Derby in 29 years, but powerful forces are determined to stop him. The Lucy H family must overcome wealthy, corrupt businessmen, murderous Russians, and much closer to home, Jim Crow. Can the brilliant Sally Anne outsmart them all? Can Tony run the Derby without putting all those he loves in grave danger? 

The answers are both complicated and unexpected.

About the Trilogy

"Bigotry isn't an opinion, it's a weapon in search of a target."

----Sally Anne, Loving Isabel

 The Chasing Sally trilogy chronicles the life and times of an extended-'family' from the year 1914 to 1954 in Jim Crow South Louisiana. The story begins with the Harrisons, a White family of 3 for whom the town 'Harrisonville' is named. In Chasing Sally (Book One), the small family quickly grows to include Emma Williams, a young Black mother, who, until she met the protagonist, Sally Anne Harrison, was alone raising her 6 children in nearly impossible poverty. Together the Harrisons' and the Williams' build a secure, happy life on the sprawling Lucy H Thoroughbred horse ranch. Chasing Sally is in part a human-love-of-animals tale. The profound love of horses shared by the residents is an allegory for the love they share for one another.

 The harsh reality of second-class citizenship for non-white citizens, especially African Americans is on full-display in the Sally trilogy, but it is not the point of the story. The story is about a diverse-group of human beings who create a refuge where the color divide is not a factor in choosing who they love, and with whom they share a home.

 The Lucy H is no utopia and no fantasy, quite the contrary. The story rings-true, and is entirely believable precisely because there are in reality good people in the world. On the Lucy H, self-aware, but flawed human-beings try to do the right thing in a society determined to divide them by skin color, religion, and ancestral heritage. 

 In book two, Raising Courageous, a Jewish man from New Jersey, Dr. Brian Gold, PhD joins the Lucy H family. Brian realizes that Lucy H is precariously hidden, and an easy target for racial and religious bigots. He fears that the Lucy H community is in imminent danger of being 'discovered' by the wider-world, and he vows to fight for his new-found family.

 Book Three, Loving Isabel, is set in the early 1950's, when the old order is finally beginning to crumble. The Ku Klux Klan, local law-enforcement, and Russian mobsters target the Lucy H community, forcing the family to protect with their wit and their lives what they've built. They face inexplicable hatred, Russian machine guns, and white-hooded men bearing a giant, flaming Cross---When mortal danger arrives at the gates of their beloved Lucy H, the unlikely-family must prove that what they share is more powerful than the forces determined to destroy them.