Dreamers and Deceivers

Dreamers and Deceivers is a 1991 romance novel written by Arkansas novelist Penny Richards and published by HarperCollins in paperback. The story centers upon horse racing in Hot Springs (Garland County) and Kentucky.

The book opens with Rider McCall arriving in Hot Springs from California upon news that his estranged father, Jackson “Jock” McCall, an old horse trainer and alcoholic, has been hospitalized. Jock has a horse, Jock’s Dream, that he believes can win him the Kentucky Derby. But with his health failing, Jock asks Rider to take over training the colt.

From this point, the main narrative is interspersed with flashbacks. Back in 1956, a younger Jock began training thoroughbreds for Hastings’ Meadows in Lexington, Kentucky. It soon became clear to Jock that his employer, Alexandria Creighton, was unhappy with her husband, Leland. Leland was a violent man who one day raped Jock’s wife, Vicky. Vicky waited to tell Jock, who, knowing that accusing such a rich man would prove useless, planned to leave the Creightons’ employ after the Kentucky Derby. Vicky, staying temporarily in Texas, later learns that she is pregnant, and either Jock or Leland could be the father. Before the Derby, with Leland away, Alexandria (not innocent of her husband’s actions) succumbed to her attraction to Jock, who after the fact “realized that sleeping with Alex had been prompted by more than revenge. It was mixed up somehow with male pride and his need to prove to himself that he was still attractive and desirable.” After the Derby, Jock packed up for California, promising Alexandria that he would never forget her.

In March 1979, Jock and family, including twenty-two-year-old Rider, moved back to Lexington after Jock’s employer bought his own thoroughbred farm. There, Rider befriended Alexandria’s son Cass. Later Cass’s sister, Colby, returned from Chicago, where she was studying design, to spend the weekend of the Kentucky Derby with Cass and Colby’s best friend, Bonnie Martindale, whom Cass was dating. Soon Rider and Colby were seeing each other, albeit discreetly, given the expected disapproval of Leland, now a U.S. senator. However, one day following Vicky’s death from cancer, Leland followed his daughter and found her and Rider having sex. Leland knocked his daughter unconscious and then threatened to have Rider prosecuted for raping his daughter and offered him a $20,000 check to leave.

Rider left to protect both his father and Colby. While Colby remained still semi-conscious from the blow, Leland raped her. The attack shattered Colby’s mind. Leland had his daughter committed to Forest Glade, an “exclusive sanatorium where the elite of Kentucky hid away their embarrassments,” overseen by psychiatrist Peter Whitten. At the clinic, Colby was found to be pregnant, and Leland (worried it might be his) made her have an abortion. Colby was released after a year’s stay, remembering nothing about the attack and believing her father’s story that Rider left after being offered money. She married one of her father’s friends and suffered bouts of drug and alcohol addiction before divorcing and buying into Bonnie’s interior design business.

Back in the present, Rider goes to the Oaklawn track to assess Jock’s Dream. But Cass Creighton (who hates Rider for what he supposedly did to Colby) shows up as trainer of the colt Runaway Again, owned by Springer Martindale, whose daughter, Bonnie, has married Cass. Jock receives a letter from the bank with a threat to foreclose on the family farm and begs Springer for a loan, but Springer wants Jock’s Dream as collateral. However, the horse fails to win the Rebel Stakes, and then comes in only fifth in the Arkansas Derby.

Colby shows up at Oaklawn, accompanying her mother. Seeing Rider at the track brings back memories. Meanwhile, Springer tells Leland of the deal with Jock, and Leland offers to buy Jock’s Dream off him should the horse lose, which he intends to make happen. He has an associate, Solly Tobias, approach jockey Danny Brewster, who has been a regular for Jock McCall. Danny’s wife Tracy, a former Playboy model and a woman of “incredible sexual appetite,” has been keeping him up late most nights, leading him to ride poorly in events, as a consequence of which Jock replaces him with another rider, Luis Mendoza. Solly offers Danny money to throw the race should Luis be unable to ride, but Danny refuses.

At the track in Kentucky, Rider learns from Bonnie for the first time about Colby’s confinement at the sanatorium and abortion. Rider goes to Colby’s business to clear the air and shows her the check, written in June 1979, that he never cashed. The later meet again and tell their stories to each other. They have sex, but Rider departs in the morning without a word, leaving Colby feeling used and realizing that “it was never possible to recapture that feeling of young love again.”

Meanwhile, Danny finds Tracy in another man’s apartment and learns that she also slept with Leland and received an expensive necklace “for services rendered.” Knowing that Tracy has expensive tastes, he accepts Solly Tobias’s offer, demanding $2 million from Leland. Springer tells Jock that Leland bought the note for Jock’s Dream. Jock calls the Creighton household, drunk, and tells Alexandria, “I just want the pleasure of knowing that I helped Leland Creighton’s bastard”—that is, Rider—“beat his legi’mate son”—that is, Cass—in the forthcoming Derby. However, later that evening, Alexandria reveals to Leland, as Colby is walking in on them, that Cass is Jock’s son, conceived the one time they had sex. As the three of them are fighting, Leland hits Colby, and in the semi-conscious state that follows, she remembers how Leland had raped her. Cass arrives and, seeing his father being attacked, intervenes, allowing Leland to drug Colby and Alexandria. That same evening, Luis Mendoza is mugged and beaten, leading Rider to recruit Danny as a replacement.

Leland tells Dr. Whitten to keep Colby sedated until after the Derby. When Cass goes to visit his mother, Alexandria tells him about Leland trying to kill her and the truth about his parentage. The night before the Derby, Solly Tobias stabs Jock and drugs the horse. Jock dies in the night.

Colby is released from the hospital (after Dr. Whitten refuses to keep her drugged), and when she learns that Jock has died, she arms herself with a silver derringer. Meanwhile, the Derby starts, and Danny decides to try to win it, but near the end, the horse goes down, causing a pile-up on the track. Colby goes to Rider after the race to tell him what she now knows, and Leland shows up to collect Jock’s Dream. Colby pulls a gun on Leland and is about to shoot him when Alexandria shows up and shoots him instead, although not fatally.

In the end, Jock’s Dream survives with only a hairline fracture, while Danny will have to learn to walk again; Tracy divorces him. Leland faces charges related to the murder of Jock. After six months at Forest Glade, now under better management, Colby is recovering, and when Rider comes to take her away for good, she tells him, “I want to go home to bed, Rider. I want to make love.”

For additional information:
Richards, Penny. Dreamers and Deceivers. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Staff of the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas