Little Sara Bolster loved the great shining horses that drew the Henkel brewery wagon through the streets of Detroit in the 1880s. Those horses came to signify her fate, for she married the Henkel son and later, as a widow, took over the business. Sara's struggle against the intolerance and hypocrisy of family and friends who disapproved of a woman running a brewery and opening a beer garden makes her a standout among the characters of Mildred Walker. The Brewers' Big Horses recreates the manners and traditions of Germans in America as Prohibition gets up steam.
Mildred Walker, chronicler of the modern American West and New England, is gaining new admirers with Bison Books reprints of such novels as Winter Wheat and The Southwest Corner. David Budbill, now living in Vermont, grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and remembers tales about the horse-drawn brewery wagons. His Judevine: The Complete Poems was chosen by Booklist as one of the best books of poems published in 1991.
