The stairs to this historic haven are steep, but at the top lie treasures, reminders of bygone days that feel as fresh as the grass outside the century-old farmhouse. Within the labyrinth of tables, bins, and boxes are snapshots of the history of a sport, evidence of the Pons family’s front-row seat for the names and events that shaped racing in the first half of the 20^th century.

Readers have already had a peek into Country Life Farm’s attic trove thanks to a special 2018 edition of Josh Pons’ regular column “Letters from Rockland Farm” in BloodHorse magazine. There, this three-time author shared photos of a young Man o’ War unearthed in an unmarked cardboard file box, the century’s best Thoroughbred unmistakable in a series of images from 1917. As he continues his excavation of his family archives, Pons has collected both his discoveries from the farm’s past and their connection to its present and future in a new book, “Letters from Country Life: Adolphe Pons, Man o’ War, and the Founding of Maryland’s Oldest Thoroughbred Farm.”

Unearthing a Legacy

Released earlier this month, Pons’ third tome is the newest title offered by Globe Pequot’s Eclipse Press imprint, a revival of the former publishing arm of the BloodHorse that offers titles on the sport as well as on horse care. The Eclipse Award winner has two previously published books, “Country Life Diary: Three Years in the Life of a Horse Farm” and “Merryland: Two Years in the Life of a Racing Stable,” on his resume as well as his long-running BloodHorse column.

Mike Pons and Josh Pons at Country Life Farm (BloodHorse/Ellen B. Pons)

“Letters from Country Life” is a departure from his previous works as he balances his exploration of his family’s history and their place within the broader history of the sport with the lessons he learns from the letters and photographs they have left behind.

As Pons unearths correspondence from his grandfather’s era and then his uncle and father’s era, he brings readers along for the ride, a delicate balance between the context and the content for the author personally and for his audience as well.

“I had to get out of the way, but be in the way enough that my presence would distinguish the book from just a history book,” he said of the writing process. “You come along with me as a reader, you learn like I learned. That became, to me, part of the readability of the book, which I was most concerned about.”

Through visual and written artifacts Pons gets to know his grandfather Adolphe, who emigrated to the United States from France as a child when his father went to work as a chef for the August Belmont family. Adolphe later worked for August Belmont Jr., and was part for the famed 1918 disposal sale where Man o’ War was sold to Samuel Riddle. The elder Pons buys the farm he named Country Life near Baltimore, Md. in 1933, a time when the nation and the sport wrestled with the economic emergency we know as the Great Depression. Readers interact with the elder Pons and many of the sport’s important figures as the narrative progresses from the early decades of the 20^th century through the tenure of sons Joe and John in its second half. As Josh, and by extension readers, experience the gems unearthed from the farmhouse’s storage, he draws parallels with our own moment, his ancestors’ perseverance through hard times a road map for dealing with the challenges we face in the 21^st century.

The genesis for Pons’s new book came in early 2017 after his mother’s death. As he worked on organizing family papers, he, “found letters from grandfather that prompted me to go to the basement and do further research. The quality of what I was uncovering, the prominence of a lot of the names of the people he corresponded with and the people he worked for, … I just felt like, ‘Wow, this is stuff that should be shared.’ ” What started out as a grandson’s search for the grandfather he never knew became more than family records. Instead, as Pons shared, “I just felt like I wanted to tell a story. A writer has this audience in mind, and I had my family in mind, and then I expanded the family angle to make it a little more universal.”

Those themes partner with Pons’s and his audience’s investments in the sport and those formative relationships to create a story that leaves readers appreciating not only where they came from but also the decisions and relationships that made racing what it is today.

Sharing Timeless Lessons

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The materials that inspired the 200-plus pages of “Letters from Country Life” are the tip of the iceberg. Pons speculates that “there may be a third to half again as much stuff that I haven't even opened yet,” an archive that could inspire more explorations of these bygone eras. Such opportunities continue the work that Pons started with his first three titles and his BloodHorse column, a time capsule of lessons about life with horses.

From those glimpses, Pons wants to leave readers with “an awareness of all the hard work of people that came before them. But this thing didn't just start this summer at Saratoga or five years ago when a rich guy got in the game. If August Belmont doesn't put The Jockey Club together in 1896, [he doesn’t] get us out of the Progressive Movement’s bullseye and impose order on this big freewheeling game that was evolving.”

“So many people have played the game ahead of you and left it for you to play. None of them shirked responsibilities,” the author and Country Life co-owner observed. “They understood that you can't have this unless you have that. I think that a person who likes racing is going to be able to get an appreciation for the efforts of people generations [behind] them.”

The Pons family’s legacy of dedication and perseverance serves as a bridge between generations of his family as well as of those readers who love the sport at the heart of this story, fostering a deep respect for the past and a shared commitment to the future.