The story of Hayley Wickenheiser is almost too perfect to be true – if she didn’t exist the CBC would have to invent her. Born and raised in the town of Shaunovon, Saskatchewan, Wickenheiser was hockey-obsessed by the age of five and determined to play the game at the highest level possible, however hard she had to push herself and however insurmountable the obstacles.

The biggest problem facing Wickenheiser, of course, was being a girl in a male-dominated sport. Coming up through the junior leagues, she got around this by simply being better than everybody else, racking up MVP awards as she went. In 1991 she was picked to play for Team Alberta in the Canada Winter Games, despite being only 12 years old at the time. From there, she went on to play for Team Canada at the World Championships and at the Olympics in Nagano in 1998 (where the women’s team won silver) and in Salt Lake City in 2002 (where they famously took the gold). In the years between Nagano and Salt Lake City, Wickenheiser found time to play on the women’s softball team at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. She then went on to become the first North American woman to play forward on a men’s pro-hockey team, though she had to move to Finland for a year to do it.

Elizabeth Etue’s clear intention in Born to Play is to inspire other sports-minded young girls to ignore the taunts and criticisms and push themselves to play at their best. As such, she couldn’t have picked a better subject: humble yet clearly ambitious and wickedly talented, Wickenheiser is what Don Cherry might call “a good Canadian girl.” Whenever her list of accomplishments and Etue’s breathlessly enthusiastic prose conspire to make her seem almost superhuman, the book’s many candid photos (most provided by Wickenheiser herself) bring her back to earth.