Etta Bancroft - sweet, kind, beautiful - adores racing and harbours a crush on one of its stars, the handsome high-handed owner-trainer Rupert Campbell-Black. When her bullying husband dies, Etta's selfish children drag her from her lovely Dorset house to live in a hideous modern bungalow in the village of Willowwood . One night Etta finds a horribly mutilated filly in the snow in the nearby woods. Miraculously she recovers and, now called Mrs Wilkinson, captivates everyone in the village. DNA tests reveal her to be a spectacularly well-bred racehorse. Etta forms a village syndicate to put the filly into training, and Mrs Wilkinson becomes a star, ridden by Rupert s delectable god-daughter Amber. Then Mrs Wilkinson is entered for the Grand National. Can she be the first mare in more than fifty years, and Amber the first woman ever, to conquer this mighty race?