The healing and therapeutic effect of horses is an ongoing theme of the new book The Horseman’s Tale, in which Vietnam veteran Jake Montgomery uses journaling therapy - and his passion for horses – to ease the trauma of his PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).
The novel is written by lifelong equestrian Tom Equels of Ocala, Fla., who is himself a Vietnam veteran having served in the Army as a helicopter gunship pilot at the age of 19. While Equels used some of his personal experience as research for the book, Montgomery is not based on the author. “There’s a lot of me in this character, not factually so much as emotionally,” Equels said. “There are lessons that I've learned that I've used with this character as a vehicle to try to communicate.”
Along with the overarching theme of the narrator using horses as steppingstones for life lessons, Equels also wanted to spotlight the social justice issues in post-World War II Florida during the desegregation movement. “The changing politics that we see today are an effort to go back to a point in time from which we've evolved,” Equels said. “The Florida of the 1950s and the 1960s that I remember as a young man is vastly different from the Central Florida that we live in today.” Equels described some of the atrocities that happened at that time as “dehumanizing,” and said that in revisiting them in the novel, he also wanted to show “lessons about love, acceptance, forgiveness and self-forgiveness.”
The Horseman’s Tale is written in the first-person in the form of Montgomery’s Written Exposure Therapy (WET) to treat his PTSD. With his wife having died from Parkinson’s disease and liver cancer the year before, Montgomery comes to the startling conclusion that she and their second son, who died of birth defects, were victims of the Camp Lejeune water contamination issue that affected many Marines and their families. “They died because of me,” he writes. During such times of extreme trauma, Montgomery turns to his journalling to channel his pain into words.
“For the first time in all those years, he knew what the trigger was for this explosion of anger,” Equels said, explaining that he used the journaling angle to “unpeel the psychological onion of this character who is very involved in horse training and equestrian activities from his youth.”
“The protagonist is writing only for him. The premise is that nobody sees his journal, so we're able to get deep into some issues,” he added.
Equels stayed in the Army for four years after the war in Vietnam ended because he felt he wasn’t ready to go back to being a civilian yet. He thinks this helped him avoid some of the more severe PTSD symptoms that other veterans suffered from. “For veterans who are in active combat that involves violence, sometimes the emotions that you need in order to fight are not the best set of emotions for leading a good life with your family and friends in society,” he said. “Many veterans come right out of combat with no toolkit for how to act back home.”
Part of what Equels aimed to convey in the book is how horses can have a healing and therapeutic impact on anyone, especially veterans. “I've come to realize over the years that horses are highly empathetic. If I feel anxious, they feel anxious. They don’t think it, they feel it,” he said. “I think horses probably have a higher empathy IQ than most people. Once you learn to open yourself up to the way of the horse and experience some of these special aspects of the relationship that you can have with a horse, your life starts to change.” That special connection can have dramatic results on veterans or people suffering from mental health issues as it allows them to feel joy, love, and other emotions that make a real difference in life, he added.
Just like his novel’s lead character, Equels grew up with horses in Central Florida and they have been a part of his life ever since. “My grandfather had horses and a barn behind his house. Then my father got a Tennessee Walker gelding that he taught me to ride on when I was about two years old,” Equels recalled. As he got older, he began cleaning stalls and exercising horses at a nearby barn.
“When I was in the Army, I was able to get back into riding at the Fort Rucker Aviation Center [now named Fort Novosel] in Alabama. It had a stable and I was able to spend time riding while training as a pilot,” he said. “When I got back from Vietnam, I was assigned as an instructor pilot at the Aviation Center, also I was a cavalry officer. It was the air cavalry, and we rode helicopters not horses into combat, but we had the same traditions as the equestrian cavalry, including a barn full of horses at the Aviation Center.”
Equels and his wife currently own a farm with a training track where trainers bring their horses to in the winter season. “We've had a lot of graduates from the track that have been great racing champions over the years,” he said. He has also been involved in Paso Fino breeding and training for more than 30 years. He principally trained them for trail riding as his farm borders a national forest and his since expanded to showing. He rode his Equelsbred Paso Fino stallions, Resortissimo and Attila, not only to numerous USEF show championships but also to the coveted PFHA's “Legion of Merit” for each stallion.
“I trained some of the horses born on my farm to a certain level and then I put them with a professional trainer so that I can show,” he explained. “It took me a while to get my equitation to that level, however. When you start riding at five years old on your own, you learn to do things that are not necessarily the way they should be done!” he laughed. “For shows, I had to train myself as well as the horse with the trainer so that I could show competently. I have since won a number of regional, national and international championships.”
In addition to his literary and equestrian achievements, Equels is also a lawyer who has received numerous federal and state awards for his high-impact pro bono work in civil rights, poverty law, and social justice cases. Equels was twice awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) for heroism while participating in aerial combat during his service in Vietnam, as well as the Purple Heart. In 2012, he was knighted in the Equestrian Order of Saint Gregory the Great by Pope Benedict XVI.
The Horseman’s Tale can be purchased here or from Amazon.com. For more information, visit https://TheHorsemansTale.com or follow Tom on social media. You can search @Author.Tom.Equels (on Facebook), @TomEquels (on Instagram), or @Tom-Equels (on LinkedIn).