Disclaimer: I received a free ARC as part of the launch team for this book. However, this blog post is voluntary by me and I truly just love this book.
Title: Finding Gideon: A Broken Dream, a Missing Horse, and the Faith of a Mustard Seed
Author: Sarah Hickner
Year Published: 2023
Publisher: LiveRideLearn
What's it about?: A memoir about a girl chasing her dream only to have her life crash down around her. She persevered through the tough times and ended up living her dream as she was meant to.
Keep reading to hear about author Sarah Hickner's writing process!
Thoughts:
Finding Gideon starts off strong, like a kick in the face from a racehorse. Literally. It caught my attention quickly and drew me in. The first few chapters were a lot of flashbacks filling in Hickner's story up until the start of the novel, but she does it in a way that feels very natural.
Then, there is a tone shift for the final chapters. It started when she left Kentucky which she described as an out-of-body experience, and it actually felt like an out-of-body experience for me reading those chapters. I could feel a change happening and I wasn't sure if I liked it. Hickner said that this tonal shift "was natural. I tried very much to write accurate to the real story, even to the emotional feel, but I don't like getting bogged down in technicalities."
Hickner was very intentional with the structure of her writing for this book. She says, "The first part of the story is more choppy because I felt jolted. Life felt hard and choppy and moved from one blink and one breath to the next. Then it moved into more of a - not to overuse this- but a long steady race where it wasn't necessarily fun but I was committed to this dream and put one foot in front of the other. There were highs and lows but I kept moving in a bit of a forced flow. And then as things came to a close it was nearly an out-of-body experience, more perfect than I deserved. But I had also learned to appreciate every good moment, so maybe a lot of the change was just that perspective shift."
There were so many twists and turns during her life in Kentucky that I couldn't imagine what would come next! I wasn't sure if she could hold onto her faith. She struggled at the time, but it was clear in the writing that her faith is strong and non-wavering now. She even told me, "To be honest my faith is a huge part of the process. My writing coach said, ‘if you're writing a story about faith you better make sure you're walking with the Lord.' So I buckled down on being intentional about prayer time in the morning. When things weren't coming together or life got overwhelming I just threw up my hands and gave it to God."
She says in the book, "This felt like a story I needed to live," and she did. She lived it, had faith in God, and has now been able to share her story with the world.
However, this wonderful, natural, and immersive structure was not always there. The book did not always start in the middle of falling with a racehorse. Hickner told me that "it originally started with my birth. No joke. And I knew the book didn't feel right but I wasn't sure what about it was off until I met with a writing coach. The first thing she said was, ‘I like your voice and you have some great moments, but what if you started in the middle of some action?' I immediately knew where I wanted to start and ended up rewriting the entire first draft almost from scratch. She recommended I read Wild by Cheryl Strayed and model it after that book. I even read a book about how she wrote Wild. It definitely made Finding Gideon more interesting and gave emotional reprieve during hard moments."
Since writing and editing are two very different processes, I asked Hickner which she found more difficult. She responded, "All of it. Ha! That first draft was probably the most overwhelming, though. Finishing felt like a bigger accomplishment than publishing the book to be honest. But editing was like an ultramarathon where half my brain kept saying, ‘it's good enough, you've gone far enough, you can quit.' And the other half was saying, ‘absolutely do not quit, one step in front of the other, finish with excellence.' So I kept going."
On the topic of Hickner's writing, wow! Finding Gideon is so well written! I keep repeatedly noting that the writing is so vivid, full of emotion, and fun because I can't think of another way to describe it. Some of my favorite lines from the book are: "unhappiness stretched from my boots to my ponytail," "a thunderstorm of colors painted my lower back," and "striding into the room like a wave unapologetically surging to shore."
I asked her if these sentences flowed naturally out of her or took time to mold. She responded, "They flowed out of me in the third draft. Ha! The first and second (drafts) were all about getting the bones of the story down. Then I came back through in the third draft and looked at every scene and said, ‘am I showing the story or telling the story?' Then it became an almost complete rewrite because I had done a lot of telling but I wanted the reader to see and feel the story."
And letting the reader see and feel the story she did! Each sentence and chapter of Finding Gideon made me feel with and for Hickner. I was constantly cheering her on when she needed it and felt sadness for her even when she decided to not feel sad for herself. She made me feel like I was on the back of a thoroughbred with her and caused my muscles to become sore from breezing.
As I said before, there are countless twists and turns within this story that makes it an emotional rollercoaster. I was experiencing each emotion with and for her and knew it had to be difficult to write. Hickner told me, "I feel crazy after editing this for three years. (Sad laugh) I've just been reliving these emotions over and over. I cry half the time I see my book cover because I miss Gideon and my dog Sandi all over again. And I'm more in love with my husband after writing and editing our love story. The hardest part was as I came to final edits of the last chapters, I was in the process of losing my horse Silas I'd had for over a decade. He was sick for months and I was spending all my money and time trying to fix him and then I'd go home and edit this deeply emotional book. I was literally reliving all the lessons I learned and talked about in Finding Gideon. It was a beautiful process I'm so grateful for, but it was also hard and I'm still emotionally raw from all of it."
She also told me, "It's been incredible to see the story He wrote through me. I'm not the writer I was when I started this book. It's been a lot of hard work, and I'm so humbled and grateful for the process and the results."
As well as being wonderfully written and carefully structured, I had a lot of fun reading Finding Gideon because there were a few things that felt like personal connections for me. The tree seat her brother built reminds me of the non-tree house I had growing up, Gideon often breathes right into her nose like Boo Boo does with me, and I also almost had an animal in my life named Flash that just wasn't meant to be.
However, my favorite part of the whole story was Hickner's surprise at the frozen ground! Hickner was born and raised in Mississippi and didn't understand how the ground in Kentucky could freeze in the winter. Being from Pennsylvania, it's something I've never even questioned.
Finding Gideon is a heartfelt and wonderful story. It has encouraged me to push forward and dare to live out my dreams just as Hickner did and to truly appreciate every moment I have with my horses. It has given me a new outlook on life and will always be there as a reminder for me.
Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Gideon. Thank you, Sandi. Thank you, Joey.
Always remember, as Ms. Brenda told Hickner, "There's power in your words."
What has you most excited to read Finding Gideon?
Find the book here.
Learn more about author Sarah Hickner here.
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