An acquaintance put me in contact with Nina. My Friend Flicka had meant so much to her, and she was willing to meet me and tell me about it. I had never heard of the book beforehand, and was surprised I enjoyed it so much. I imagined that she must have read it as a young girl, and that the memory had stayed with her ever since. Our meeting took place in my office one afternoon in February. I made us tea, and we sat down in comfy chairs. We talked for a long time.

Thor: Could you please tell me all about your relationship with My Friend Flicka.

Nina: It's a bit difficult. I don't quite know how old I was when I first read it, but I was a young child. Let me have a look at the book – it says it was printed in 1973. It may be that one of my brothers had it first. So I don't know when it came into my hands, but it's like it's always been there. My mother loved reading out loud, she had taken lessons, but I preferred reading on my own. I am born in 1967, so I must have been seven or eight. Perhaps my mother read it to me the first time. But I clearly remember reading it when I was nine, ten, eleven, twelve. I can't recall what it was like arriving at a particular chapter, for instance – the feeling of ‘oh, what's going to happen now?’ I have a general memory of the world of the book, a world of horses, which was my dreamworld. Where I grew up, only the rich people had horses, so that was beyond even thinking about as something that would come true. My cousin and I would play at having a ranch full of horses. It's not that I really wanted to live on a ranch in Wyoming, it was just a different world to dream about. But now that I live in the countryside, I can remember all the little descriptions of scenery and animals which at the time would merely serve to colour my reading experience; they now happen before me all the time, making me think sometimes that ‘Oh, I live in Flickaland.’