In 1919, the son of a black Kentucky sharecropper led a ragtag band of Russian nobility and Polish soldiers on a dangerous mission to save more than 250 fragile royal thoroughbreds left in crumbling czarist Russia. Nicknamed 'Black Maestro' after winning Eastern Europe's most prestigious horse races, Jimmy Winkfield had arrived in Russia fifteen years earlier, when Jim Crow laws drove him from his beloved Kentucky bluegrass despite the fact that his skills as a jockey had twice taken him to the winners' circle of the Kentucky Derby. Amid the blood and fire of the Bolshevik Revolution, Winkfield's already epic life had taken yet another astonishing turn—and it would not be the last.

Black Maestro is the incredible story of an extraordinary man who became an unlikely participant in the greatest historical events of the twentieth century. It is a fascinating true account rich with drama, adventure, romance, triumph, and heartbreak that returns Jimmy Winkfield to his rightful place as an original American hero.