The summer heat hangs heavy over early nineteenth-century Fairmount, and with it comes a tale that unfolds like the lengthening shadows across a well-worn racetrack. Elaine Mary Griffin’s debut novel, Shadows in the Pleasure Gardens: Regarding Robberies and Racehorses, transports readers to a world where bank notes change hands as quickly as loyalties, where the thunder of hooves provides momentary escape from life’s pressing questions, and where a young man discovers that the path to purpose rarely runs straight. An Unconventional Coming-of-Age Tale At its heart, this novel follows Chester Carter, a self-described unambitious young man apprenticing at Tate’s Banking and Loans in the quiet village of Fairmount. Chester himself might argue that he is not unambitious but rather independent-minded, a distinction the narrative explores with considerable nuance. When he witnesses a brazen daylight robbery committed by men disguised with war paint, Chester finds himself thrust into an investigation that will upend every comfortable assumption he has about his future. What makes Chester such a compelling protagonist is his ordinariness. He is neither hero nor …