[12/01/26] McEldowney, Jill: Alydar

YesYes Books, paperback

Publication Date: December 1, 2026

Publisher Marketing: 

On the night of November 15, 1990, a champion racehorse named Alydar inexplicably shattered his leg while alone in his stall. Two days later, he was dead. His death, believed by some to be a tragic accident and by others to be a horse-murder for hire, led to the full payout of a $40 million insurance policy.

Jill Mceldowney's second poetry collection revisits this haunting mystery through epistolary love poems addressed to Alydar. Blending noir-landscape imagery across the mythos and pageantry of horse racing, Mceldowney's poems explore the lines between devotion and doubt, tenderness and obsession, and ask how much damage two people are willing to endure under the guise of love.

ALYDAR is simultaneously an elegy, an investigation, a nightmare, a love letter, and a collection about the stories we tell ourselves in the aftermath of violence.