Book Notes — SKY WATCH: CHASING AN AMERICAN SADDLEBRED Reviewed by Caroline Grass
Braiding equine history and memoir into a compelling woven narrative
Emma Hudelson’s Sky Watch: Chasing an American Saddlebred Story
University of Kentucky Press, March 5, 2024
Reviewed by Caroline Grass
After reading Sky Watch for my creative nonfiction course, I was impressed with Hudelson's ability to weave her personal narrative and Sky Watch's life throughout the book. As a writer and journalist myself, I am always looking to read more books like Hudelson's that combine memoir and history to see how others tell compelling stories. I truly enjoyed reading this book and I’m left inspired with ideas for how I can continue to enhance my own creative writing.
In her debut book, author Emma Hudelson leads the readers of Sky Watch: Chasing an American Saddlebred Story into the world of the American Saddlebred— or, according to the American Saddlebred Horse Association, “the horse America made.” She chronicles the life of Sky Watch, a horse who was arguably the best Saddlebred to have lived and performed, winning four World Grand Championships and twelve overall world titles. Writing for an audience of horse experts and enthusiasts along with people not engrained in the horse world, Hudelson artfully weaves the story of her connection and relationship to the breed through memoir in a braided narrative to offer all readers something to latch on to and resonate with.
Sky Watch rose to fame in the 1980s during the heyday of Saddlebred showing. He “oozed power” as a colt and had the “energy of a toddler on a diet of Pixy Stix.” Everyone who worked with him described him as electric to see and it took an expert trainer to mold him into the excellent show horse he became. With Saddlebred shows bringing in upwards of 15,000 fans a night when Sky Watch was competing, Hudelson wistfully recounts the grand showcases that would captivate audiences and inspire young people. The allure of working with horses that Hudelson felt so strongly as a youth and now as an adult seems to have disappeared in others as she looks at an industry in decline with breeding numbers that “have been taking a nosedive for decades” and grandstands that now sit empty except for a few horse show moms who cheer on competitors. Through her chronicling of Sky Watch’s life, Hudelson probes the essential question, “For a breed designed to entertain a crowd, what does it mean when the crowd disappears?”
As a self-proclaimed fangirl of horses, Hudelson writes with an adoring tone but recounts the story of Sky Watch with passion and backs up her writing with research and interviews from people working in the industry. Through the dialogue she opens with individuals who worked with Sky Watch and rival horse Imperator, Hudelson investigates the Saddlebred industry’s history, practices, breeding, and culture to paint a picture of what this breed means to the owners, trainers, farm hands, and fans who take part in horse showing across the United States.
Chapters throughout the book touch on the industry’s troubled past that bleeds into its current form. Hudelson looks at Saddlebred showing, that even today isn’t always inclusive through the expenses required to show horses, barns funded largely by white people relying on grooms (often undocumented workers) working “the longest hours for the lowest pay,” and contested practices that divide horse enthusiasts to include bracing horse’s tails and using herb salves and oils to alter how a horse naturally looks and moves. Hudelson notes that “tradition is a mighty power” as the industry slowly moves toward modernity. Hudelson interrogates her feelings, thoughts, and potential complicity in perpetuating norms within the Saddlebred industry as she loves the show horse world but is well aware of the harm that can come from it. Deeper than just proclaiming her love of Saddlebred in this book, Hudelson writes about legacy, questioning what people pass on to the generations that come after them as she gets ready to have a child of her own. And then as a new mom wanting desperately for her love of horses to pass to her child as her mother gave the same love to her, Hudelson ties her family to the future of the Saddlebred in America.
With an authority gained through individual experience riding horses and showing and through others’ first-hand accounts, Hudelson offers the audience an unfiltered view of the Saddlebred industry— a network and society that most people have never seen or heard about. Hudelson’s book spans generations, by delving into the history of Saddlebred and Sky Watch’s legacy and then Hudelson’s own childhood and adult life. Sky Watch leaves the reader with a personal and heartfelt narrative of how Hudelson, her mother, and now her daughter have a shared love of horses with her family creating their own Saddlebred legacy story.
Caroline Grass is a rising senior with a journalism and legal studies double major at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York. She is passionate about writing and in her journalism particularly enjoys covering stories about the environment. She is coxswain on the Varsity Men's Rowing Team at Ithaca College and can often be found on the water or hiking. When not at school, she lives with her family in Virginia. Learn more about Caroline and her work here.
