Virgin Spring is the story of Nic Nichols, a rebellious teenager from the Midwest who has long had dreams of becoming a rodeo cowboy. A year before he is eligible for military service in World War II, he gets a lucky break: his parents send him to Arizona in a last-ditch effort to encourage him to finish high school. There, his passion is broncos rather than books, and his penchant for trouble continues to plague him as he tangles with rustlers, wrangling, and rodeos. But it is his friendship with an old vaquero and his romance with a young Apache woman that transform Nic into a man. Through the legend of Virgin Spring, he discovers the timelessness of love. This poignant tale evokes both the history and magic of the Southwest. "In G. N. Buffington's engaging and strongly written Virgin Spring, Nic turns into a cowboy before our eyes " -Richard Bradford, Author of the Classic, Red Sky at Morning "An engaging novel that captures the spirit of a time and place over which World War II casts its long shadow. Highly recommended." -Marc Simmons, Southwest Historian and Author of Ranchers, Ramblers, and Renegades and Others
A story of love, war and an incessant driving force of a territory that is trying to make itself ready for statehood, regardless of the consequences to local inhabitants. Descendants of early Spanish settlers, the Native Americans, already on the land, are forced to face the invasion of eastern immigration—taking their land where they once lived peaceably with each other. The Civil War brought southern sympathizers seeking gold from the Rocky Mountains that would aid their cause. The commingling of the different races rent deceit, hatred, terror and also love among these early pioneers, all of whom were seeking a better way of life—but disregarding the lives of early Spanish and Native Americans.
Sonja Getz of Dorfburg, Texas, who upon reaching her 30th birthday decides to go in search of her long-lost father. She shares this odyssey with reluctant partner Prairie James, a professional rope-twirler doing the second-rate rodeo circuit.
She’s the vixen, even though she’s never done an improper thing in her entire life. He’s the virgin because, well, he’s never done a woman in his entire life. Lady Della Easton was in love with her best friend. Had been forever. But this was the summer she was moving on from him and letting him go. She would put it all in fate’s hands and let it determine her future. In the wake of his two older brothers' engagements, the shy Lord Colin has finally worked up the nerve to tell his best friend that he loves her. That is, until he finds out that she just wants to be friends. With a heavy heart, he decides to test fate and see if it can’t bring him a wife instead. Will fate play its hand and finally bring these two star crossed lovers together? This is the third book in the steamy new regency series, The Ashbourne Legacy, that follows the seven brothers of Snow White. Read this novelette if you like sweet and spicy easy reads with witty banter and lovable, enchanting characters. The Ashbourne Legacy: The Blighter and the Bluestocking The Scoundrel and the Scientist The Virgin and the Vixen The Rogue and the Rose The Rake and the Writer The Wastrel and the Wallflower The Spy and the Spinster
A true account of the author's adventures with Buffalo Jones, the last of the plainsmen, in 1908. Many of the incidents were incorporated into the author's fiction story The young lion hunter.
The essays in Menacing Virgins: Representing Virginity in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance examine the nexus of religious, political, economic, and aesthetic values that produce the Western European myth of virginity, and explore how those complex cultural forces animate, empower, discipline, disclose, mystify, and menace the virginal body. As the title suggests, the virgin can be seen alternately or even simultaneously as menaced or menacing. To chart the history of virginity as a steady, evolutionary progression from a religious ideal in the Middle Ages toward a more secularized or sovereign ideal in the Renaissance would obscure how unstable a concept chastity is in both periods. What this collection demonstrates is that medieval and early modern attitudes toward virginity are not general and evolutionary, but specific, changeable, and often conflicted.
Straight-from-life reminiscences of Hafen's youth growing up on a southwestern ranch. Throughout these personal essays, Hafen addresses important issues of land use and management currently affecting the West.