Carmine Prioli remembers that each time the captain caught a glimpse of the horses, he'd slow down the boat and everyone on board would grab their cameras.

That's what happens when people discover the wild horses of Shackleford Banks, which Prioli first encountered years ago on trips to the Outer Banks. People are drawn to them in a unique, emotional way.

"You don't get all excited about wild pelicans," said Prioli, an English professor and director of the graduate programs in English at N.C. State University. "There's a mysterious, mystical connection between horses and people."

To help answer the question of why people are so drawn to the horses, Prioli has written "The Wild Horses of Shackleford Banks." To promote the new book, he will appear Saturday at Quail Ridge Books with Diego, a Shackleford horse that was removed from the banks after an injury and now lives in Harnett County.

There's some dispute about how the horses came to live on Shackleford Banks, which is near Cape Lookout on the southern end of the Outer Banks. Some believe they descended from Spanish stock, while others believe the horses came to the banks much more recently.

Prioli's book doesn't attempt to provide a definitive answer to their origin, but he does think he's figured out why people are drawn to the herd, which is managed by scientists to keep their number between 120 and 130.

"They've come to represent freedom," he said. "Americans, for good and for bad, were formed by their experiences with the frontier." The horses have freedom that we don't have in our modern, technological world.

"Being an English professor," Prioli said with a smile, "I've come to see metaphor everywhere."