Elizabeth Letts’s stunning historical retelling, The Perfect Horse, takes the reader through eighty years of equine history, with World War II the devastating heart of the tale. Though nonfiction, the book reads like an historical thriller and is in turns both moving and wrenching.

The book is a poignant recounting of some of the world’s finest horses—the ballerina-like Lipizzaners of the famed Spanish Riding School of Vienna and Poland’s prized Arabians—and their struggle to survive the decimations of war. Passionately and grippingly told, Letts explores a two-fold story: Not even horses were spared from the Nazi ideal of a superior race as the eugenics program of Germany sought to create the perfect horse; and the joint mission at the end of the war to save the horses from the approach of the brutal, hungry Russian army.

The Perfect Horse is a bit disjointed in the telling, simply because of the sheer scope and complexity of the events, though Letts attempts to circumvent this with dividing the book into sections that explore the players on each side of the war, the mission itself, and the aftermath. The tale started slowly as Letts set the stage. The author’s love of horses comes through on the pages, though at times her descriptions of the horses come across as rambling anthropomorphisms.

The character list at the beginning of the book was invaluable, and Letts’s strength in this story lies in grabbing readers by the heart and bringing both man and horse to life on the page. The main heroes of the story—Austrians, Germans, Poles, and a band of Americans—are fully-fleshed characters who are taken straight from history and given distinct voices in The Perfect Horse. Letts’s thorough research using archival materials and first-person accounts is evident especially when it comes to these courageous men. The villains of the story are Gustav Rau, a German horse expert in charge of the breeding in the Third Reich, focused solely on the assembly-line turn out of horses suited for an Aryan nation; the swiftly approaching, brutal Russian army who saw horses as little more than tools or food; and the war itself.

Lyrical and memorable, The Perfect Horse is a stunning, bittersweet tale of how those noble, inspiring creatures we know as horses can capture hearts, represent hope and beauty in the midst of horror and rubble, and unite even the gravest of enemies in an effort to save them.

Highly recommended for those interested in the Spanish Riding School of Vienna, the Lipizzaners, and the World Wars, and for animal lovers, with the caveat that some of the scenes are difficult and upsetting to read.