Non-PRO English Other Idioms / Maxims / Sayings colloquial expression

"What the dairyman had come to ask, almost in tears at the end of this sunday afternoon with his friends, was that I should help to 'get a book off the ground' about the old racehorse, to to justice to the old animal."

the passage is from Naipaul's "The Enigma of Arrival", where he relates a period of his own life in the British country.

the racehorse in question is an old animal left to die in a paddock in this remote village they are living in. i'm not sure if there might be a connection with the phrase or idiom and the writer's actual authorship (the book is about the author's own life, after all), but there's no reference at all that the dairyman knows he is an author, and the instance in the passage is the first time they have a conversation.