She finds the Mongolian race on an internet search, and starts making inquiries even though the deadline for registration has passed she no longer has enough time to obtain inoculations and the proper training. She feels the press of responsibility with no growth closing her in and leaves the position to return to her childhood home in London (a city she considers to be repressive as well) to find her next adventure. The book opens with her running away from a job as an au pair for a family in Austria who only leaves the house to drive their impressive cars and who only speak English when Prior-Palmer to practice her German with them. Prior-Palmer has been running from things, she explains throughout the narrative, all of her short life. But Prior-Palmer not only proves them wrong, but exceeds her own expectations, for both the outcome of the race and for the humanity that she gains in the course of the race and its unbelievable finish. Prior-Palmer is only nineteen years old when she haphazardly signs up for the race, secures the sharply discounted entry fee and funding for supplies and logistics not only does her friends and family feel that she will not even complete the race, but her fellow racers see her as finishing last, if at all. How do you write about an experience nearly no one else will have? That’s the task at hand for the first book and memoir of Lara Prior-Palmer’s Rough Magic, an account of her victory in 2013 in the extreme sport of long-distance horse-racing in Mongolia.
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