It has been more than 40 years since the horseracing world trained its spotlight on two Dorchester brothers and the feats of Timely Writer, their rags-to-riches thoroughbred who was crossing the finish line and moving into winners’ circles all over the circuit while becoming a national fan favorite and a candidate for the Triple Crown, with wins in the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness in Maryland, and the Belmont in New York.

Then, in a flash of time, celebration gave way to tragedy.

Now, members of the brothers’ family have published “The Ride of their Lives,” a recounting of the amazing story of how the late Peter and Fran Martin, who grew up on Centre Street and operated a meat processing plant in Newmarket, found themselves in the blue-blood circles of horseracing’s elite – but just for a while.

In getting ready for the Derby in early May 1982, Timely Writer became seriously ill with colic. He missed participating in the “greatest two minutes in sports” and in the two other Triple Crown events.

After a lengthy recovery, he returned to action and won several important summer races. Then, in August, he broke his leg in mid-race and had to be put down on the track at New York’s Belmont Park, where his body was interred for a time before it was moved to Kentucky.

“They literally caught lightning in a bottle with this horse in 1979 when they bought him for only $13,500 – at a time when most thoroughbreds his age were going for $200,000 routinely,” said Michael Bergeron, one of the authors of the book and the son-in-law of Fran Martin. “He was going to be the next great champion. Everyone thought so; he was the favorite for the Triple Crown. I knew it was a good story, but I’m convinced that because of the highs and lows of the story, its greatness got lost to the sands of time.”

The Brothers Martin – Peter, second left, and Fran, second from right and their team after a win at Suffolk Downs. Family photo

John Martin, Fran’s son, said that even while basking under horseracing’s brightest lights, his father and uncle made Dorchester their proud home and base of operations.

“Dorchester was forever part of my dad’s and Uncle Peter’s lives, including through their decades of racing horses together,” he said. “They took great pride in their heritage.

“The two of them, along with their older two brothers, met every Friday at Adams Fish Market on Adams Street in Dorchester, which my Uncle Harold owned. It was there that they discussed business, family, politics, horses, and who was going to Suffolk Downs on the weekend, all while joking with one another and friends who stopped by. The town was always at the center of the four brothers’ lives throughout their adulthood.”

Peter and Fran Martin at their meat-packing facility in Newmarket. Family photo

“The Ride of their Lives” is being featured at an event in Quincy on April 12, from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at The Next Chapter Books and More in Quincy, 1147 Hancock St., with some proceeds from sales going to the Boys and Girls Club of Dorchester – a place that was special to the Martin family, with Peter having never left Dorchester and Fran moving to Quincy but remaining proudly OFD.

Bergeron and Martin wrote the book last year and are now ramping up the publicity tour ahead of the spring racing season and the Kentucky Derby on May 4. Bergeron, an attorney, said the story is extraordinary due to its tragic ending in the wake of so much celebration.

“The book isn’t rainbows and unicorns,” Bergeron said. “It’s about life and families and loss and grief and people who had been together for years splitting up.”

Peter and Fran Martin grew up near Wainwright Park (now Dr. Loesch Family Park) and after serving in World War II, they returned to start their careers, Fran into their aunt’s meat packing company Kyes Supply, and Peter into the accounting world and later joining Kyes as the bookkeeper. Both retained a love of horses from their childhood and started dabbling in racing horses on the fair circuit.

“They did that for years and then they started racing at Suffolk Downs, Rockingham Park (New Hampshire), and Narragansett (Rhode Island),” said Bergeron. “They bought one horse per year, using a broker and trainer named Tony Everard and it was a pastime. They loved it and had fun.”

In 1979, Everard, who was based in Ocala, FL, got a look at Timely Writer. Neither of his parents had raced, but something few knew was that his blood line was strong with the superhorse Northern Dancer in his lineage. An additional plus to Everard: His eyes were “attentive.” The owner couldn’t sell the horse, and Everard found him for sale at a Kentucky auction. The Martins gave him a budget of $10,000 but they ended up paying $13,500 and Timely Writer made around $700,000 over his lifetime.

After training through the thoroughbred’s first year, Everard and the Martins knew they had a generational talent –a diamond in the rough. But they needed money to start racing him. Using Dorchester street smarts, the brothers and their team kept Timely Writer a bit of a secret, and when it was time for his first race, known as breaking the maiden, they didn’t bring him up to Suffolk Downs with any fanfare.

Instead, they took him in June 1981 to sleepy Monmouth Racetrack in New Jersey and put him in a race where he had 12-1 odds as an unknown. He won – by eight lengths and coming close to setting a track record – and the brothers won $25,000 off their bets and were off to the next race.

“In those days there were bookies everywhere,” Bergeron said. “They knew what they had and knew what they were doing. They had money spread out with bookies everywhere…They needed money to finance the upcoming two-year-old racing season, and they didn’t have the up-front $50,000 they needed. They gathered bets from the track and all the bookies and had $25,000.

“Back then, the money wasn’t pooled all together, so you could get away with it. It was a closely held secret for a long time because that was frowned upon, known as ‘cashing a bet,’” he noted. “But that’s how they had to do it to get the money to get things going because they knew they had a superior horse,” he said.

From that race on, the brothers and their horse went on a magical ride that is fully spelled out in the book: Timely Writer won the Mayflower Stakes at Suffolk Downs, ran past the competition at a Saratoga meet, and finished the season with a win in Belmont’s Champagne Stakes over a heavy favorite. In spring 1982, came impressive wins in the Florida Derby and Flamingo Stakes after which he was routinely written in as the favorite for the Triple Crown.

“The Champagne Stakes put them on the map with the most important people in racing,” said Bergeron. “At that time Fran started fielding phone calls at his Quincy apartment from the wealthiest people in the nation. Everyone wanted a 50- percent stake in the horse and that would be like $6-8 million.”

The family still has the envelope from the Churchill Downs inviting them to participate in the Kentucky Derby. It carried a letter addressed to the meat packing company in Newmarket.

Bergeron said the family coped with the loss of Timely Writer for years, but he and John Martin focused exclusively on the fun times they had had while writing ‘The Ride of their Lives.’

“Being up close to these animals, they are very human-like and thinking back it was very emotional for Frannie, but they were not focused on the bad times,” he said. “They didn’t let it linger and they talked a lot about the good times and the great memories and the great people that were around them – and stayed around them for many years after.”