Carol March McLernon has always liked horses--in Western movies, in horse shows, and at Pony Playce in Appleton, Wisconsin. As a child, The Black Stallion was one of her favorite books. The family hobby farm on the outskirts of Lake Geneva was home to several ponies and horses but she left the care and riding to her husband, Robert, and their three children. Her writing career began when she learned that five oxen teams were used to deliver the church bell to a mining town in Wisconsin before it became a state. The bell had traveled up the Mississippi River to Galena, Illinois. She wrote a fictional book, Katie Down the Pike based on that fact. Oxen appeared in her other historical books: Samuele: Man with Many Names, Leadmining Towns of Southwest Wisconsin, String of Hope, and Ice for Sale.