The best narrative nonfiction tells a story, but also seamlessly educates so that one element of the book cannot exist without the other. It’s an easy premise, yet the execution is far from simple and often comes down to something that is much more challenging to craft: an author’s pure unbridled delight. Debut author Emma Hudelson captures the thrill and breadth of her research in her memoir Sky Watch: Chasing an American Saddlebred History. Told through the lens of motherhood, Hudelson explores her lifelong love for the American saddlebred alongside her reckoning of her wayward adolescence.

Deeply informative and entertaining, this love letter to American saddlebreds brings show horses to life in a way that appeals to both horse lovers and those who are horse curious. The ability to appeal to both is just one of the many lessons writers can glean from Hudelson’s enchanting book.

In our conversation via email, we talked about the trickiness of braids in nonfiction, horses as self-care, and the larger purpose behind her book’s epilogue.

Melissa Fraterrigo: Throughout the book, I was struck by the way you balance the present-day narrative or memoir aspect of the book—you and your husband Ben’s decision to start a family—with the more nonfiction strand of the past, as you detail the American saddlebred Sky Watch, who dominated the horse-show ring in the early and mid-1980s. Can you talk about the decision to structure the book in this way? What were some of the issues you encountered or remained mindful of as you drafted?

Emma Hudelson: When I started this project, I wanted to have a very light presence as a narrator, like Sy Montgomery in The Soul of an Octopus or Wendy Williams in The Horse. I’d imagined myself with no narrative arc, showing up as an “I” on the page only in direct relation to the subject matter. The more I wrote, the more my own story pushed through, which made this a messier book, but ultimately a more rewarding one. It would have been much easier to write the straight biography I’d originally set out to write! Instead, I wound up with a braid. One strand covers Sky Watch’s rise to fame and the challenges he met along the way. The second strand is pure memoir, detailing the way horses have carried me (literally and figuratively) throughout my life, even when facing a major life change like motherhood. The third strand covers the cultural relevance of show horses, which is in an apparent decline. Sky Watch’s strand provides narrative propulsion, and it’s really a sports story covering one freakishly talented horse. The memoir strand of the braid (I hope, at least) answers the “so what?” of Sky Watch’s strand of the braid. Sure, the stallion Sky Watch dominated the American show ring in the 1980s, but why does that matter? It matters because horse people like me only feel whole when horses are in our lives, and Sky Watch represents the very best of the best of show horses. The memoir strand is also a response to the existential crisis of American show horses, an industry that has been on the decline since Sky Watch took his last victory pass in 1988. My story shows how horses will continue to matter in the families who pass down a love of horses—an inheritance that tends to be passed along maternal lines, which ties back to the motherhood arc of the memoir strand. I had to constantly ask myself these “so what?” questions or I’d end up meandering and writing about nineteenth-century hats for three pages straight.

The transitions challenged me the most. There’s a version of this book that alternates chapters—one Sky Watch, one memoir—but it’s not as good. Instead, it made more sense to keep it organic. I had to look for the windows and doors in Sky Watch’s story that would let me slip into memoir or culture or history for a few paragraphs or a few pages. Then, everything needed to flow together. I couldn’t just transition back to Sky Watch with a “Meanwhile, back in ’86. . . .” I worked and reworked every single transition in the book, which was very necessary.

MF: You’ve obviously been a fan of saddlebreds your whole life. Can you talk about how this book came to be?

EH: I hopped on my first American saddlebred at seven years old, and weeks later, we rode straight into the show ring and trotted out with a blue ribbon. Sky Watch had retired five years before that blue ribbon ride, but I was aware of him in the way that a young tennis player is aware of Billie Jean King. It would be convenient to say that I’d always been a Sky Watch superfan, but he didn’t become important to me until I was well into adulthood. In 2018, when I started riding horses again as an adult after fifteen years away, I started writing around the subject of horses and American saddlebreds, really just trying to wrap my head around why horses inspire so much devotion in those who love them. My writing lacked focus, so I took a trip to the American Saddlebred Museum in Lexington, Kentucky, in early 2019 to do some research and seek inspiration. There, I watched a video of Sky Watch—one I’d seen before but had somehow never really seen—and my entire body lit up. I knew immediately that I was supposed to write about him. Sky Watch needed his own book. As the memoir strand of the braid developed, some of the other material trickled back in, but Sky Watch remained the focal point, the strand the others wound around.

MF: I’m in awe of the scene writing, the language, and how seamlessly you bring Sky Watch to life. You mention in the author’s note that many of the scenes are composites of “archives, memories shared with me, and my own experiences with the American saddlebred,” but I’m curious about other strategies you used to recreate such riveting scenes.

EM: I was lucky enough to have photo and video footage of Sky Watch’s key classes—that’s horse-show speak for competitions—but there’s no video camera in the barn aisles at home, so I had to dig deep into anything I could find that would give me clues about the hours and hours of training that led up to each half hour of show ring time. Real estate ads for the farm where Sky Watch lived. Newspaper coverage of the town where Mitch Clark, Sky Watch’s trainer, lived. Property cards from the county assessor. GIS data. GIS data is rich. I encourage everyone to check out their city or county’s GIS map. You can find out exactly how much your neighbors paid for their houses and how much they’re paying in property taxes—or if they’ve been dodging their property taxes. Seriously, though, tiny details like the type of roof on the barn, the date of the barn’s construction, and the number of people in Mitch’s high school graduating class turned out to be important. Even if those details didn’t make it into the book directly, they still shaped the narrative and gave it texture. Every time I interviewed Mitch, I took pictures, shot video, and recorded audio. I didn’t just interview him, I observed him. I had to get a sense of how he moved through the world, what it looked like when he mounted a horse, how he gestured when he talked. Having that kind of footage allowed me to picture as accurately as possible what things might have looked like forty years ago when nobody was there to record anything at all.

MF: As an adolescent, you turned toward drinking and friends, fracturing your time at the barn. For instance, you write: “You’re not good enough to ride warped into you’re not good enough. The friends who had replaced horses didn’t see me sitting alone in my room at night, listening to Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘The Sound of Silence’ on repeat and writing poems about gray weather and lost daughters.” We get the sense of you as a character and how horses have very much been a part of your own story, even if you turned away from them for a bit. There’s a sense in Sky Watch: Chasing an American Saddlebred Story that your desire to begin showing horses again is a form of self-care.

EM: Horses and horse shows are absolutely a form of self-care for me. In the book, I talk about “the horse bug,” which is a cutesy way of describing the deep, deep draw that some of us have to horses. It’s something you either have or don’t. Some girls who have never been exposed to a real, live horse fill their notebooks with pony drawings, beg their parents for riding lessons, and canter instead of running during recess. They have a connection with horses that doesn’t make logical sense. Other girls grow up with horses in their backyard but have no interest in them. I say “girls,” because horse girls are in the cultural zeitgeist, but boys and nonbinary folks can have it too, of course. I’m lucky enough to have been exposed to horses at a young age, and for me, it just clicked. My mom was very into horses as a kid and was a champion equestrian, and she saw I had interest in horses and let me pursue it. My parents, who are both ballet professors who had international performing careers, got me into ballet classes and piano lessons too, but neither of those really fit. I’d choose barn boots over ballet slippers any day, even though ballet is much more of a family legacy than horses. For those of us who have the horse bug, it’s a compulsion. We have to find ways to keep horses in our lives to help ourselves feel whole.

When I turned away from horses as a teenager, I fell apart. Drinking, drugs, boys, and serious mental health problems filled the hole horses had previously filled in my life. It took fifteen years, a twelve-step recovery program, and a lot of therapy, to put myself back together enough that I could allow myself to think about riding again. As soon as I swung my leg over a horse, I knew I was right back where I belonged. In the saddle, partnering with a being much larger than me—physically and emotionally. That partnership is healing, and there are plenty of theories that explain why, many backed by research, that have to do with things like mirror neurons and power exchanges. If you have the horse bug, those theories are more than theories. The knowledge that horses are therapeutic comes from some mitochondrial, DNA-level place. Competing in the show ring is like the ultimate form of therapy. With horses, you have to work together in a partnership that’s beyond language. Maybe that’s what makes the connection with horses so hard to talk about that we resort to sayings like “horse girl” and “the horse bug.” When it works, the partnership is so intimate and deep, it’s impossible to language it in any way that makes sense.

MF: This book is for horse lovers and those who are horse curious. I was impressed by how you balanced these two readers. For instance, when Sky Watch is moved to the West Coast, you take a moment to explain how horses can now travel in “climate-controlled, smooth-riding semis that cushion their legs against the bumps and rough services. They can even travel by air in specially designed stalls in cargo holds.” You intercept questions before I asked them, but did so in a way that didn’t feel insulting to anyone.

EM: Finding a way to reach both the horse-loving reader and the horse-curious reader was a major challenge. I’d hoped to make the story and scenes accessible enough that a non-horsey audience could still follow the story, but an experienced saddle seat rider wouldn’t be bored by it. In my early drafts, I tended to over-explain, but as I returned to other books about niche hobbies, like Helen Macdonad’s brilliant H is for Hawk or Jenn Shapland’s My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, I realized that I needed to give uninitiated readers more credit. If they wanted to google “canter” to understand that gait, they could. As I revised, I tried to only explain the things that were absolutely key to the narrative or were the type of facts that aren’t on Wikipedia. I don’t know if I fully succeeded. This is my first book, so I hope I get better at it for the next one—or at least I’ll know what to do so I don’t have to draft and then cut as much as I did.

MF: I loved all the competitions featuring Sky Watch and Imperator. I imagine you watched clips of these showdowns. If readers had time for one video, which would you recommend, and what should we take note of as we view?

EH: The 1983 showdown between Sky Watch and Imperator is legendary and available on the Richfield Video Archive, but the full footage of it is paywalled. For a taste of what Sky Watch looked like in the ring, this seven minute compilation of him in the ring is worth a watch. Viewers should pay attention to the headset, meaning the position of the horse’s head, and leg action. The neck should be held high and arched, with the chin tucked. Even more important are the expressions and overall vibe. Sky Watch and Imperator were performance horses who loved performing. In every video, their ears are up and their eyes are bright. They understood competition too, and they gave their all in the show ring. It’s thrilling, and even non–horse people pick up on the excitement.

MF: The interviews with Mitch Clark, Sky Watch’s primary handler, were generous and thoughtful. Can you share some strategies with writers to assist them with their own nonfiction projects?

EM: Mitch was an interviewer’s dream, so I lucked out. He’s a great storyteller and was willing to sit and chat with me for hours every time I met with him. Maybe it helped that I met him in his natural environment—at his barn, on the show grounds—and spent time watching him work and show horses instead of just sitting down to talk, but I don’t think I can give myself too much credit. I did have to be both nimble and diligent in my interviewing, because he’d start a story, then I’d ask a follow-up that would lead to another story, then another follow-up, ad infinitum. We usually wound up on a totally different topic than where we originally started. That’s not a bad thing, and I gained a lot of texture and rich details from that kind of wandering, but it would have been easy to lose track of the information I really needed to have. Staying flexible and being willing to go wherever the interview led kept these interviews fun and interesting, but I had to make sure I kept on top of what I really needed to find out for the book’s sake.

MF: I loved the epilogue with your daughter, Fern, perched on the back of your horse for the first time. It really encapsulates the book’s arc.

EH: I’m glad that epilogue didn’t feel too self-gratifying. I truly believe in the lineage of horse love my mom passed on to me, and it’s one I’m offering my daughters, too. If they turn out to love horses the way I do, I want to nurture that. I also believe that passing down a love of horses is what will keep the show horse industry alive. We probably won’t hit the heyday of the mid- to late-twentieth century ever again, when folks spectated at horse shows the way we do baseball games today, but the horses will still be there, trotting for all they’re worth, for the generations to come. With any luck, my granddaughters will be the ones at the reins.