Peter Pan: The Forgotten Story of Phar Lap’s Successor
ISBN: 9781742750224
Published 26 October 2011, 496 pages
Peter Pan was a phenomenal racehorse in 1930s Australia, a winner of two Melbourne Cups at a time when only one horse before him had achieved the feat (Archer in 1861 and 1862). Peter Pan was a son of the imported Pantheon from a moderately bred mare called Alwyna, and he was foaled, raced and retired by Rodney Rouse Dangar, whose Italianate mansion ‘Baroona’ overlooks the New England Highway outside of Singleton. Peter Pan, in any other era, would have been a champion for the ages, but he came along in the immediate aftermath of Phar Lap in 1932, and his career was forever overshadowed by the tragic memory of the ‘Red Terror’.
The release of this book in 2011 reinstated a long lost fairytale of Australian racing. Pound for pound, Peter Pan achieved more in his racing career than even Phar Lap, winning two Melbourne Cups and being a rare, if not the only, horse to own the mile record in Australasia the same year he won the two-mile Melbourne Cup. This biography is one of the darlings of Australia’s racing library with its colour insets and rich storytelling.
To this day, Jessica credits Peter Pan with kickstarting her career. If Phar Lap is king, this horse is her best friend. The blond Peter Pan died on 5 May 1941 and is buried on his favourite hillside at Baroona. In Singleton township, he is a local hero.
Shannon: Before Black Caviar, So You Think or Takeover Target, there was Shannon
ISBN: 9781742750255
Published 1 November 2013, 448 pages
Shannon was a 1940s war-era hero, a horse so undervalued in racing history that his story had to be written. It’s an overwhelming sad tale of a horse of whom much was asked, and a fascinating look at some of the extraordinary people that moved in and out of his life.
Shannon was bred by Kia Ora Stud and he was by the champion import Midstream from the mare Idle Words. He proved one of the quickest, most genuine milers in Australian history, breaking record after record in a track era that included Bernborough, Flight, Tea Rose and Russia. Shannon was sold mid-career for a record-breaking sum in 1946 and then resold to California. Raced by Neil S. McCarthy, who was the private attorney for Louis B. Meyer, Shannon ended his career as an eye-watering record breaker. He was the first horse in North America to ever crack two minutes for a mile-and-a-quarter. He retired to Spendthrift Farm in Kentucky.
Writing this book was an emotional rollercoaster for Jessica, who got very attached to the memory of this sweet racehorse. Shannon had managed to sidle into relative oblivion in the halls of Australian racing, and she counts this book as her best. The storytelling is epic, the prose beautiful… Shannon, as the late Les Carlyon said, ‘is one of the best books ever written about Australian racing’.
Third book coming in 2025…
Jessica’s third commercially published book is coming in 2025. Stay tuned for further details on this brilliant new racing title for Penguin Random House.