Although introduced by a brief scene at a Canadian horse race during the early 1900s, in which the famous horse Man o' War is set against a Canadian horse, Sir Barton, the action of this novel begins in the early 1700s in Morocco, an Arab country across the Mediterranean Sea from Spain. A boy king, Louis XV, controls France, while in England the Quaker religious sect, founded in 1648, is becoming more popular. The action moves from Morocco to France to England, and at the end, Agba returns to his country. Agba and the horse Sham, ancestor of Man o' War, are sent as part of a carefully chosen group of horses and grooms as a present to the king of France. The corrupt ship's captain pockets the feed money for the horses, and both horses and boys, arriving in starved condition, are rejected by the powerful lords who...