Action Fraser, W. A: Thoroughbreds. v1. 17 Feb 2013

[crutledge]

W. A. Fraser: (1859–1933) married (1889) Jessie Maud Barber. A Canadian novelist and inventor, he was born in Nova Scotia of Scots parents and educated at Westchester. He worked as a mining engineer in India, Burma, and Canada, before taking to writing and broadcasting animal stories. Thoroughbreds: A Sporting Novel (1903) is concerned with horse-racing in America. The plot hinges on a sinister banker trying to ruin the honest trainer by drugging horses with cocaine; the climax is when the trainer's lovely daughter disguises herself as a jockey in order to win the crucial race. Mooswa and Others of the Boundaries (1900) is a series of derivative animal stories (after Kipling) about Mooswa the Moose, protector of the Boy who is the son of the Hudson's Bay Company's factor in a remote area of Canada.

Excerpt
By an inconsistent twist of fate he was known as Honest John. His father before him had raced in old Kentucky to considerable purpose, and with the full vigor of a man who races for sport; and so to the son John, in consequence, had come little beyond a not-to-be-eradicated love of thoroughbreds. To race squarely, honestly, and to the glory of high-couraged horses was to him as much a matter of religion as the consistent guardianship of parish morals was to the Reverend George Dolman. Therefore, two men of strong beliefs were set on opposite sides of the fence.

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