Description
An Englishman in Texas
a memoir by Ron Kenney
978-1-948692-02-1 paper 16.95
978-1-948692-03-8 ebook 9.99
5½x8½, 144 pp.
Memoir
August 2018
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An Englishman in Texas is a memoir by Ron Kenney, an English jockey who came to the United States in 1960. His autobiographical account begins with his childhood in the northeast of England during WWII. He goes on to describe how, with no knowledge of horses, he was sent four hundred miles from home at 14 years of age to apprentice as a jockey. He’d been turned away by the foreman at the coal mine because he was too small. The story follows Kenney through his coming of age to his coming to America when he was 30. It follows his fortunes in pursuit of the American Dream. Kenney tells of riding horses for some of the wealthiest and most famous horse trainers in Texas. He tells of his loves and his betrayals, and he introduces the people who helped him along the way.
Ron Kenney is a man short in stature, but tall in tales.
—Dr. Barbara Hayes DNP, FNP-C
An Englishman in Texas is a deftly scripted and impressively candid memoir by Ron Kenney . . . edited by Kimberly Davis, An Englishman in Texas is the intensely personal and inherently interesting story … making this memoir an unreservedly recommended addition to personal reading lists, as well as community and academic library Contemporary American Biography collections.
—Midwest Book Review, “The Biography Shelf”
I just read and thoroughly enjoyed this book . . . [the] writing is excellent; his story is really good, and I enjoyed the layout.
—Linda Pease, Huntsville Arts Commission
A nicely done memoir with good supplemental photos and details. Written as if the author was talking to you . . . the sweet story and determination of the author are carried through on every page.
—Jennie Rosenblum’s Reviews
kpdavis –
What a unique memoir from a former English Jockey who apprenticed as a jockey and came up close to his first horse at the age of 14 because he was turned away from the mines where his father and brothers worked. Ron Kenney recalls his The Battle of Brittain above the skies of Northern England when he was a child. And he recalls this life in America, from 1960. He started off riding race horses, then training race horses, but Ron is still going strong, he’s had a few more careers along the way.