As a lifelong horse lover, I've learned that people who advertise horses for sale make second-hand car dealers look like saints. There are words that don't go really go together – "Quiet ex-racehorse" or "Thoroughbred, ideal for beginners". But unfortunately for Gillian Wills, a somewhat world-weary music lecturer who decided at the age of 56 to buy her first horse, warning bells did not ring.

I say unfortunately, but of course this inspirational memoir is really about the extraordinary journey Wills embarked on when she bought – or rescued – the emaciated, dangerous and volatile Elvis.

It's funny how destiny comes calling, and in Wills' past there hadn't been anything to suggest she was going to join the ranks of the world's horse obsessives, but after a tough decade of a marriage gone wrong and losing a high-status job, Wills, almost without knowing it, developed some confidence issues.

Not exactly, you might think, the kind of issues that could be fixed by buying an ex-OTT (Off The Track) racehorse. But Wills felt a compulsion to remove Elvis from his ghastly surroundings, and happily   for Elvis, for Wills, and for readers of this lovely book, she acted on the compulsion.

Almost immediately after she buys Elvis, Wills is plunged into a world of expense and confusion: Elvis gets sick and injured, and despite all the training in the world, her regular lessons and commitment to Elvis, he has serious problems with being ridden, particularly by Wills. She also has to learn about horse feed, horse rugs, vet bills, unscrupulous trainers, dangerous agistment centres and people who always know better than she does.

Fortunately, as Wills digs deep into her wallet and her intuition, she begins to find the people and places she needs, learning to manage the unruly Elvis with horse-whispering techniques, while she and her partner plan to move from Brisbane to some nearby acreage, where Wills dreams that one day she'll be able to ride around on her beautiful steed.

But Elvis has too much post-traumatic stress disorder ever to make a riding horse, and therein lies the kernel of this book. Wills discovers there's no need to ride a horse in order to have a relationship with it.

By the end of her journey with Elvis, Wills realises she has been led on a trail of self-discovery, and that she is standing tall in her world, full of confidence to lead her life as she wants to. Other horses arrive, and riding too, but ultimately what Wills gives to Elvis – and receives back from him too – is love, pure and simple.