How Did I Get Here?

What drove me to possible insanity?

By Elizabeth Woolsey

Feb 17, 2026

It was 4 AM

and I think it was spring in Australia. I couldn’t sleep. I’d finished writing my last paper for veterinary medicine. I thought … turns out it wasn’t, but at least for a while I thought I was done sharing my knowledge and I’d developed this habit of waking at 4 AM!

I’d written two non-fiction books, but I was considering fiction.

Horse Doctor: An American Vet’s Life Down Under and Jack’s War, which is a collection of letters my father wrote to his father and mother during his time in the Army Air Corps during WWII.

Fiction? Do I do an All Creatures Great and Small kinda story again? I’d written several more from my practice life, but I couldn’t be inspired at the time. I needed an escape from my reality.

I know — crazy, but as a horse doctor, there were only a few hours in the day that I could count on my clients to be sleeping. That was when I wrote my papers on plant toxicity, how to treat burns in horses, and the surgical technique for colic.

What was I going to do? I tried to go back to sleep for several hours. I tried for a few days and then said, “heck,” (it may have been another word, but I don’t remember.) I digress. This was the moment. I thought I’d try some creative writing.

I know I had a colicky horse in the barn. He was on intravenous fluids, and I just replaced the bags. I had at least two hours before I needed to worry.

So, what should I write about? I began a line or two in one direction or another. It wasn’t satisfying. I kept skirting an idea that came from several sources:

The Travels of Dr. Rebecca Harper was born from watching Bonanza daily in Australia. I mean it was on five days a week and in COLOR!!! (Huge!) Then there was the conversation with my friend Naomi, if you could join one of the television shows you watched as a kid, which one would it be? We were both Roy Rogers fans.

Many months later, I added: And what if you couldn’t return?

So, I quietly wrote a few chapters and with my heart in hand, I sent the beginning to my sisters and a few office staff. The response was encouraging at first, and then it got ugly — really ugly. There were demands and expectations from my readers for more. There were few critiques. Just demands for more. There were suggestions I not work and concentrate on my writing. After I published the book I submitted it for a Kirkus Review. My mother was a librarian and she used Kirkus to guide her reading.

Kirkus:

Dr. Rebecca Harper had her life planned and checked off her list: a veterinary degree, a husband and daughter, and her first veterinary clinical position. She was set for life. But then the unexpected happened...

Rebecca is wounded, disoriented and desperate, after a freak accident. In seeking help, Rebecca returns to Virginia City, Nevada, but instead of 1981, she discovers it’s 1857!

Trapped in another world, without a clue how she arrived, she embarks on a desperate quest to return to her husband, daughter, and her career. But how does she return to the future?

To survive, Rebecca must use her veterinary skills and 20th century knowledge and values to make a new life for herself and find a way back. Rebecca’s travels lead to encounters with real and fictional historical characters and events, including the Civil War. She meets Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Sr., Mark Twain, and Clara Barton and witnesses Abraham Lincoln giving the Gettysburg address.

Facing both physical and emotional trials, she fights to find her life again. Will she be able to find her way back to the 1900s, or is she bound to the past?

Fans of Time Travel Fantasy (Outlander) and old Westerns like Bonanza will LOVE this historical romance series The Travels of Dr. Rebecca Harper.

“An entertaining walk through the 19th century that will appeal to lovers of horses and historical fiction.” — Kirkus Reviews.

Kirkus Verdict: GET IT!

A “Get It” review is huge!_

I was off. And 7 years later and 14 novels later, here I am at 4 AM working on novel 15. BTW I’ve done more in the vet med department including by speaking at vet conferences and writing a chapter in an upcoming new volume of Equine Emergencies, a vet textbook and a few more papers.

Oh, I almost forgot. This picture haunted me well before I wrote the first book.

Charles Beldin Circa 1936

I am available for book clubs on person and Zoom, This book is perfect as a starter. You can see more on my Substack https://elizabethwoolsey.substack.com/