SOLOMON

In Gill’s novel, a rogue animal scientist and a talented grad student make astounding breakthroughs in interspecies communication.

As the story opens, readers are situated in a vast field, exploring the interiority of the characters gathered there: a group of horses. It is an important night on the farm, because Snip, a beloved mare, is giving birth to a foal named Solomon. Though Snip prefers to give birth in privacy, Solomon is destined to be a much-observed horse, as he holds within his genes the scientific hopes of one Theodore “Doc” Grand, an aging animal scientist and academic outcast on the verge of a world-changing discovery. The narrative then shifts to focus on Barbara, a hard-working graduate student in the local university’s animal science program. As a woman in a male-dominated field, Barbara is accepted by but somewhat separate from her colleagues, a division that is only widened when, after she meets Doc Grand, he asks her to visit his lab. Barbara arrives at the doctor’s huge farm, where he shows her his astounding work: Through a combination of breeding and technology, Doc has managed to speak to preternaturally intelligent cows and horses—the prize example is Solomon—and have them “speak” back to him through a computer. Impressed and astounded, Barbara is quick to accept when Doc Grand offers to pay her to help further his work. But the doctor is terminally ill, and it will be up to Barbara to ensure they can reach their goals before he meets his demise. Though some of the “science” here feels fanciful (“the weirdest thing, however,” Barbara says upon meeting Solomon, “is that I just learned a basic lesson, with technical details, about animals from animals”), Gill’s prose is steady enough to carry readers over any bumps threatening the suspension of disbelief. Doc Grand and Barbara may be character types readers have seen before, but their ingenuity and devotion to their work manage to distinguish them from garden-variety players.

A well-crafted novel with smooth prose and flesh-and-blood characters that sell the outré premise.