“Scared Money Never Wins is ostensibly about Julia Wendell’s mid-life re-commitment to her first love, horses–the raising, breeding, riding, and showing of them. But what it is really about is Wendell’s attempt to face up to the risks her passions–familial, artistic, erotic, and material–entail. The question that resonates throughout the collection, ‘What makes us court perfection/ Once the dream of speed is already gone?’ is at the heart of her gamble to live fully with the improbabilities and imperfections that define her. And as such, these poems offer a ‘lens to an inner world/ we must learn to grow comfortable with.'”
— Michael Collier