Writing a novel was hard work. The research needed to learn how to care for horses in the late 1800s was difficult. I did not have a lot of time. I began writing Spancil Hill in 2018. I finished it in 2023. It was published in 2024. I was teaching full time at UGA until 2020 so I could not devote time to the book until 2021. I enjoyed the research, learning about Irish history and culture in the late 1800s, and Shire horses. 

I had finished the book and reread it to discover that I had to get four Shire horses from Galway to Boston and then New York in forty days. I did not think I could leave a blank page and suddenly the horses were in New York. How horses were transported in the ships and were treated on board helped Cahey do his job of transporting the horses safely. This information was important to establish Cahey’s credibility as a horse trainer. Calculations were made to estimate how much food, hay, and water were needed for the horses. Then I had to research the terrain between arriving in Boston and getting to New York via train. The few pages describing these scenes took many weeks of research to get it right. 

Each time I introduced a new scene involving a horse, I needed to verify it was correct. This was done by finding evidence in published sources or by interviewing experts. One of the experts was Tom Neilan, a farmer living near Gort, Ireland. In the interviews with Tom, I learned how horses were traded at fairs like the one described in Spancil Hill. I read many books about horses and their personalities. I talked with people who rode horses. 

I have ridden horses. One horse in Kent, England that I was on got spooked and reared. I stayed on the horse but when she took off, she ran by a building and I fell damaging my ankle. I have been pushed to the ground by a horse who was jealous that someone other than her owner came to feed her. And in my teenage years when exercising a horse for a friend in a fenced-in pasture, the horse jumped a fence and raced through the woods. I stayed on that horse and managed to save face. 

Spancil Hill is a story about Cahey’s life including his love of horses.