Keith Stealing Horses

Read from Wednesday, December 29th to Saturday, January 1st, 2011.

Out Stealing Horses, by Per Peterson. First book of the new year! My first instinct was to make a resolution to read more books, but I think I am keeping up a good pace right now. I should probably slow down a little to focus on other areas of my life (i.e. get a job!).

This book, supposedly a classic in his native Norway, was recently translated into English, and the translator did a beautiful job. I got this as a present for my Mom for her birthday in October, and she regifted it to me as a Christmas present. I am not complaining, it was a great book in good condition.

It is the story of an elderly man, Trond. Having lost his wife in an accident, he leaves the city, Oslo, and moves to an isolated old cabin in the north. He spends his days with his dog fixing up the place. Then he meets his neighbor, another old man, and Trond starts having memories of a summer when he was 15, back in 1948. The rest of the book is alternating chapters of the present, and the summer in 1948.

During that time Trond spent the summer with his father in a small cabin in the north as well. Trond was friends with a boy, Jon, in a neighboring cabin, but one day he left a gun out and his brother Lars shot his other brother, and Jon was sent away to be a sailor. It is then revealed that the present day neighbor is that boy Lars who shot his brother. (Do they live in the same houses as when they were kids that summer? It is not explicitly revealed or denied.)


Most of the story focuses on the relationship between Trond and his father, who has a mysterious past. He would disappear for months at a time during the war. It turned out he was a spy, secretly delivering messages to resistance fighters across the border in Sweden. Trond and his dad and some neighbors work on clearing some forest and shipping the logs down the river to a sawmill. At one point Trond catches his dad kissing the wife in the neighboring cabin. He is confused for a lot of the summer, constantly admitting that he does not know everything he should. Everything becomes clearer by the end of the summer. They bond on a trip on horses down the river, but after Trond is sent home to Oslo, his father never follows, and he never sees him again. Trond worries that his father stayed with Jon and Lars' mother, and he spent the rest of his life as a father to Lars. It is never revealed, and Trond does not ask Lars about it. But he takes the absence of that conversation as proof.


Trond struggles with the memory of that summer while alone in his own cabin, as winter is setting in. He physically begins to have problems as well. Then his daughter tracks him down and tries to reconnect with her father. It is a cyclical story, but Trond ultimately decides not to abandon his own children like his father had.


It is a beautiful book, full of rich imagery of a summer and winter in rural Norway. The book makes me want to visit that area. See the deep woods, the river, stay in a cabin. Trond and his father are complicated men. Similar in many ways, they are hard workers, appreciate a good day's labor and keeping things organized. They value nature and honesty. It is a shame that he had to abandon him like that. I really enjoyed the book with its beautiful, poetic prose. Information is shown to us readers slowly and deliberately, and the story unfolds in ways you cannot expect. Highly recommended. Four out of five stars.