Barn Blind

Barn Blind is a 1980 novel by Jane Smiley. The main character is a woman so obsessed with her horses and the dreams surrounding their training that she sees nothing else -not her husband, or her children or their needs, or anything but her horses and her own agenda for achieving her own goals. I guess most of us have blind spots, but this woman is a picture of the harm and lasting pain that such blindness can cause.

from the back of the book:

The verdant pastures of a farm in Illinois have the placid charm of a landscape painting. But the horses that graze there have become the obsession of a woman who sees them as the fulfillment of every wish: to win, to be honored, to be the best. Her ambition is the galvanizing force in Jane Smiley's first novel, a force that will drive a wedge between her and her family, and bring them all to tragedy. Written with the grace and quiet beauty of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Thousand Acres, Barn Blind is a spellbinding story on the classic American themes of work, love, and duty, and the excesses we commit to achieve success.

Kirkus Reviews calls it "A devastating probe ... special -but deep-driving." The Paris Review says, "It’s like a horse book for grown-ups."