Susan Ketchen's fictional series — Born That Way, Grows That Way, Made That Way, Rides That Way — about aspiring equestrian Sylvia does much more than chronicle the ups and downs of horse-crazy adolescence. It embraces many different issues, making it relevant to kids of all ages and especially appealing to horse enthusiasts.

Honestly, the world needs more people like Sylvia and more storytellers like Susan Ketchen, who has created the delightful heroic narrator, who with wisdom and an invincible sense of humor recounts her dreams, asleep and awake, of riding and owning her own horse.

Nothing gets by Sylvia. From the start she lets readers know that she's aware of how very different she is. In Born That Way, she's 14 and can't help but realize that, compared to her classmates, she's stuck in a grade school body that can pass for a kid of eight. Her dreams about horses (sorry, no spoilers here) help her sort things out in everyday life. Sylvia manages to cope with well-meaning but clueless parents whose own dysfunction gives interesting substance to this entire series.

Sylvia's mother completed training as a psychological counselor and projects all sorts of issues, particularly sexual ones, on her daughter, while her father pinches the budget to extremes in keeping with his own financial career. They manage to add to Sylvia's angst in their bumbling efforts to fulfill their parental roles. Sylvia's maternal grandfather, however, gallops to her rescue and provides light at the end of the tunnel. He promises to buy "Pipsqueak" a horse when the top of her head reaches his shoulder.

The Canadian-born author experienced all the crazy adolescent stunts on horseback and has a lifetime of memories on which to build her plots. In fact, during her own rather unbridled youth, Ketchen competed to the Preliminary level in classic 3-day eventing although nowadays she's content to ride for pleasure. She knew she wanted to write and ride, but opted to earn a decent living and eventually specialized as a Marriage and Family Therapist. She kept writing, mostly professional pieces. She admitted that she finds more creative inspiration when she spends time in the barn and walking by the river, but never while running the vacuum.

Ketchen's continuing interest in neuroscience, behavior, health, psychology and animal training contributes to her wit and wisdom as an auteur. She sculpts pithy prose with a built-in pace that carries the reader like a good horse. The result is a brilliant and empathetic job of expressing the angst experienced by every human who has ever suffered through the pangs of adolescence, especially while dreaming of riding and owning their own horse or pony.

Wise beyond her years, Sylvia has to be one of the coolest literary protagonists ever created. She contributes powerful insights and perspectives throughout this series. Being horse-crazy makes Sylvia a member of a special tribe. She learns that she has a genetic condition, Turner Syndrome, and was born without one of the two X chromosomes. Ketchen does a terrific job describing the family dynamics when this diagnosis is made. Her parents never thought to consult a specialist when their child didn't grow as expected, but a savvy psychiatrist (at mom's insistence), who wears very clean, highly polished Ariat paddock boots to appointments, becomes Sylvia's ally.

The problem is that it might be too late for the treatment to help Sylvia if her growth plates have closed. Not to mention Sylvia's own reluctance to begin the hormone therapy, which would thrust her into the maelstrom of the mental, emotional and physiological changes that tend to accompany the onset of puberty…

But she has horses in her head and heart and, early in the series, finds encouragement and hope in the form of the horseperson who moves into a property that's on Sylvia's bicycle route to school where there was already a horse where a barn's being built, then a little house. Sylvia's dreams about horses are starting to become realities, and the author excels in keeping the reader riveted.

Born That Way, published in 2009, focuses on Sylvia's unrequited love for horses and an undiagnosed condition that inhibited her growth and development. Her treatment for Turner Syndrome begins in Made That Way (2010), but serious side effects from the medications make her wonder if being normal, including fertility, is all that desirable. In Grows That Way (2012), Sylvia faces complicated dynamics everywhere she turns — at home, at school and even in her preferred environment of a friend's stable.

The latest in the Sylvia saga, Rides That Way (2017) proved to be another spellbinding read although reaching "the end" made this reader email the author, begging for more. It blasts out of the start box at a competition where Sylvia fulfills her dream of galloping and jumping cross-country aboard Brooklyn, her horse. Her trainer Kansas, who's in the late stages of pregnancy, didn't want them to gallop, but Sylvia lets her horse rip. She starts to realize that he's running away with her but can't slow his pace. The horse takes off a stride early at the final fence and hits it hard. They almost come to grief but finish the course with no penalties.

Adrenaline coursing through her system, Sylvia doesn't want to dismount even though her horse needs cooling down. Persuaded out of the saddle by her cousin Taylor (who, along with her family, plays a key role throughout the series), Sylvia finds she can hold onto that heady feeling of invincibility instead of reverting to her usual status as human shrimp. Her head filled with the glory of that wild ride, she gets a scolding from Kansas for going too fast, which earns horse and rider penalty points, thereby eliminating them from any chance of a ribbon. The fact is that they came close to a rotational fall at that last fence, which could have caused grievous or fatal injuries to horse and rider.

By now, Sylvia has a real horse, a boyfriend, girlfriends – a superlative cast of supporting characters and secondary plots that will keep you engrossed from start to finish. You don't have to be a horse enthusiast to relate to Sylvia.

The entire Born That Way series, available in paperback and e-book formats such as Kindle and Kobo, is targeted at Young Adult readers but is extremely appropriate for kids of all ages. The books average about 200 pages each, but Ketchen packs so much into her prose that your literary appetite will feel sated even as you want to shout for a Sylvia sequel.

With the holidays rapidly approaching, you might consider adding one or all of the entries in this delightful saga to your gift and stocking stuffer list. After all, there's nothing like curling up cozily with a good book on a wintry day.

Bet you can't read just one…

For more information: www.susanketchen.ca