A Horse Story

The human experience is such that some people carve their own paths out of misery. In the case of Susan Richards, author of Saddled: How a Spirited Horse Reined Me in and Set Me Free, her way out of the alcoholism that threatened to destroy her was to love and care for a horse. Only several years after she stopped drinking did she join Alcoholics Anonymous.

Richards' drinking followed a disastrous childhood. A number of people in her family were alcoholics, her mother died when she was young, and soon afterward, her father abandoned her and her brother, leaving them unattended and alone. Only after three terrifying days did her grandmother’s chauffeur come and take the children to her house. Afterwards, Richards was shuffled around from one unloving relative to another.

Reading Saddled, I wondered about Richards’ focus on a horse and her penchant for divining what the horse thinks. I was reminded of the Tom Hank’s film, Castaway. In the film, a plane crash survivor on a small deserted island developed a dependency on “Wilson” a volleyball that also washed ashore, that the Hank’s character anthropomorphized, and on which he painted a face. I suggest that this strange relationship somewhat parallels that of Richards and her horse. In both cases, desperate people reach out to find a way out of their loneliness.

Part of the reason for the success of books like Richards’ (and films like Castaway) is how they plumb the depths of a condition that few of us can completely avoid. This is the secret of Wizard of Oz, in which a wicked witch and her simian minions threaten poor Dorothy to her very core. In Richards’ case, the villains include her mean grandmother, the grandmother’s vicious chauffeur, Richards’ second husband and a two-timing boy friend. Both Dorothy and Richards want to “go home” to a secure place.

There is a big difference between Richards and Dorothy, of course. Richards is an adult who must bear responsibility for her actions as a grown up; Dorothy is a fictional child.

This reviewer was tested by Richards’ claim to divine the thoughts of her horse. “There couldn’t have been any doubt in her mind that whatever her status had been for the past year, here she was a celebrity,” Richardson tells the reader at one point. Really?

Richards’ odd claim notwithstanding, she does a fine job of tracing her metamorphosis from abandoned child to abused alcoholic adult to a largely healed person who has resolved many of the problems that plagued her for decades. In the end she became a certified social worker who gained the self-knowledge that she lacked in her earlier years.

Richards tells her story using finely and thoroughly wrought (though sometimes repetitive) scenes, many of which beautifully describe a horse in action. An earlier Richards book, Chosen by a Horse, was a NY Times best seller and despite some of the book’s flaws, Saddle, too could achieve that success. It has a ready audience among the multitude devotees of animal-themed books. In addition, Saddled will also please readers who just want a well-told story of human redemption.