When I first met my husband, he seemed older than most of the young men I knew from college. Actually, he was much the same age as most of the other young veterans who were then attending school on the GI Bill. I suppose the illusion can be blamed on the difference in clothing. He wore a suit and tie while his contemporaries dressed mostly in jeans and T-shirts, as was the fashion of the day for college students.

I was twenty-two at the time we met, and when he told me he was twenty-six, the four years difference seemed a pretty wide age span. However, I appreciated his maturity as an improvement over the high-schoolish behavior of the veterans I’d met in college. I was to find out later that January, shortly after I’d first met him, he wouldn’t actually be twenty-six until the next August, and by then I’d have had my twenty-third birthday. It all seems so unimportant now, but at that age a year can seem to make a significant difference. When I questioned him about the truth, he explained that horses all turn a year older on January first and it seemed a sensible practice that simplified things.

My initial reaction was a sort of unease – did the man think he was a horse? Of course not. After some thought, I realized that he was very young to be an established accountant and to have the responsibilities he had been accorded. He was employed by a large accounting firm headquartered in Des Moines and was involved with yearly audits of a few nationally recognized corporations. He associated with much older businessmen who apparently assumed he was older and more experienced than he actually was. The little deception regarding his age seemed justified and acceptable.

Several years later, having joined a book club and discovered authors that were new to me (not included in the literature classes I’d taken in my college days) I came across the British writer Dick Francis. That first Francis novel that I read (Reflex) was a masterful puzzle based on the chemistry and quirks of photography and involving the world of British horse racing. I sought out other stories written by Francis and discovered that he had been a steeplechase jockey and had ridden for the Queen Mother. When he retired from racing, he took a job as sports writer for a newspaper, and in due course, began writing fiction.

All his novels seemed to be related to the world of horse racing, though not necessarily about racing, and it was from his books that I learned about horses all having their “birthdays” on January first. A horse born on the first day of the year would be considered to be a whole year younger than one born just the day before – a fact that made a considerable difference in racing which classifies horses by age as well as other requirements for various competitions.

I happily discovered that this writer who was rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors had written an impressively long list of intriguing mystery stories. Unlike another favorite (Agatha Christie) he seldom involved any one character in more than one story. His heroes range from royalty to stable hands, from pilots to wine merchants, glass-blowers, accountants, and of course jockeys, trainers and horse owners. I discovered, after a few of his books, that the heroes are usually vulnerable, modest, realistic men who get the stuffing beaten out of them in the first few chapters and manage to combine revenge and compassion as they solve the puzzles and triumph over their particular villains.

I describe Dick Francis as being a generous writer. By that, I mean that he doesn’t assume you are ignorant of a particular subject, yet he has a way of insuring that you understand enough to follow the plot. I guess you could call it a sort of literary sleight of hand. At the same time, he never gives the impression that he thinks he’s smarter than the reader. He doesn’t show off, as many writers do, by tossing in foreign words or quoting obscure philosophers and poets. And I am grateful to him for reassuring me that my husband didn’t think he was a horse.