When a bull-riding accident ends Ross Turner’s rodeo career, he hermits himself away on a remote farm in New Brunswick. Depressed and disheartened, he’s determined to leave his cowboy life behind. Beautiful Jessi Wallace, sent to help him out of his crisis, is resolved that he won’t do any such thing. She has healed dispirited horses; she can bring him back from his defeat. And living alone in the farmhouse with him doesn’t bother her. After their childhood together, she feels certain handsome, charismatic Ross holds no romantic threat to her. Recently betrayed by her rodeo cowboy fiance, she’s not about to let another rodeo rider into her heart.
The best-selling memoir Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy tells the fascinating story of actor Dirk Benedict’s journey from the big sky country of Montana to the hustle and hype of Hollywood. It also describes his odyssey of self-discovery and growth as he changes from struggling actor to celebrity, from meat eater to vegetarian, from cancer victim to cancer victor. Brilliantly written—insightful, witty, and always challenging—Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy may change the way you perceive actors, and even make you reconsider the truths in your own life.
Confessions of a Horseshoer offers a close and personal look at the mind-set of a professional horseshoer (farrier) who also happens to be a college professor. The book, an ironic and playful view of the many unusual animals (and people) Ron Tatum has encountered over thirty-seven years, is nicely balanced between straightforward presentation, self-effacing humor, and lightly seasoned wisdom. It captures the day-to-day life of a somewhat cantankerous old guy, who has attitude and strong opinions. Throughout the book, Tatum ponders the causes that led him into the apparently opposing worlds of horseshoeing, with its mud, pain, and danger, and the bookish life of a college professor. He tells the reader that it is his hope that writing the book will help him understand this apparent paradox between the physical and the mental. Tatum provides a detailed description of the horseshoeing process, its history, and why horses need shoes in the first place. The reader will learn about the dangers of shoeing horses in “Injuries I Have Known,” in which Tatum describes one particular self-inflicted injury that he claims no other horseshoer has ever, or will ever, experience. “Eight Week Syndrome” demonstrates the close, often therapeutic, relationship between the horseshoer and his or her customers. Tatum relates the story of an old Wyoming cowboy who could talk with horses, and consistently cure their injuries, lameness, and other physical problems after the veterinarians had given up. The humor in the chapters on chickens and rabbits will entertain any reader, as well as the sections on various dogs, ducks, llamas, goats, flies, and a sexually disoriented pig. Readers of western life and lovers of horses will find Confessions of a Horseshoer an informative, quirky, and delightful work full of humor, attitude, and off-beat insight.
Coming of age in the rugged and unforgiving Southwest may not suit the faint-of-heart, but it is the perfect landscape for a compelling and humorous memoir of a lad who endured a mid-1900s cowboy upbringing in rural Arizona and New Mexico. Growing Up Cowboy chronicles the foibles and fortunes of its author, Ralph Reynolds (a.k.a. Luna Kid), in an engaging and heartfelt fashion. From wrangling ornery critters to finding first love, the Luna Kid confesses all and regales the reader with vivid stories imparted with an abundance of wit and humility. So saddle up and ride along as the Luna Kid introduces you to a helping of the Southwests fascinating terrain and colorful characters. And along the way shows you the irreverent side of adolescence adventure and the human side of growing up cowboy. Growing Up Cowboy can be found on the shelves of the National Cowboy Museum Library, and selections from the book have been reprinted by the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.
In this harrowing, true account, Henderson lays bare the locker room legends, the wild partying, the rampant addiction and the unwritten rule of the pro sports world that anything goes--as long as you win the game. A tough, brutal, agonizing story . . .--Howard Cosell.P. Putnam.
Jack B. Ralph, a Navy veteran was born in Chicago, grew up in Easton, PA, attended Lafayette College, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and graduated with a Master's Degree in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago. Ralph has devoted much of his life in the interest of civil rights by writing, publishing and speaking on behalf of all minorities, handicapped persons and the aging population. and now, he shows, in a light manner, examples of the serious history, interdependence and similarities and differences between those of the lives, experiences and working conditions of horses and of our own population. He has published, with entries written by persons of ages 4 to 94, the fascinating marriage saving "Love is Everywhere," 365 ways to live a life of love. the collection of observations and definitions of love illustrate the living with real expressions of love. His "A Kid's World," Parts One and Two, contains thought provoking stories with messages that can start children in gaining maturity. Jack's wife of over 60 years is a beautiful redhead and a former professional bowler. They are parents who enjoy their two sons, five grandchildren, terrific daughters-in law, and they joyously share their sense of humor also with that of their cousins, their fine in-laws and, with acceptance, possibly the entire receptive loving world.
Once upon a time there was an innocent lad from West Texas who wrote a novel and fell in with a rabble of Texas writers as they were bridging the literary gap between J. Frank Dobie and his paisanos and the current bumper crop of Texas writers who seem to be everywhere writing about everything. This rowdy rabble of gap bridgers bonded in a sort of literary and social club they called Maddog Inc. (Motto: Doing indefinable services to mankind.) But our hero managed to live through it all anyway. This is his story. Jay Milner was part of a generation of Texas writers whose heyday lasted from the late 1950s through the 1970s. The group comprised Billie Lee Brammer, Edwin "Bud" Shrake, Gary Cartwright, Dan Jenkins, Larry L. King, Pete Gent, and (peripherally) Larry McMurtry and Willie Morris, among others. From the musical scene there were the "picker poets" such as Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, Billy Joe Shaver, and Waylon Jennings. Some of the primary works coming from this generation of writers include Brammer's The Gay Place, Shrake's Strange Peaches, Cartwright's Confessions of a Washed-up Sportswriter, King's The Whorehouse Papers and None But a Blockhead, Jan Reid's The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock, and Willie Nelson's album Phases and Stages.
Youth can seem to be a series of highly romantic and significantly tragic events when viewed by its participants. Or, as Ralph Reynolds discovers, it can be simply one ridiculous thing after another. These are the adventures of a Luna Kid, a young cowboy suffering teenage prairie angst in rural New Mexico.
Amelia Darcy has no interest in marrying well. Her heart belongs to the sky and the dirigibles of brass and steel that swoop over Victorian England. But when her father, an eccentric inventor, dies, the Darcy siblings are left with scrap metal—and not a penny to their names. Their only hope to save the family name and fortune is to embark on a contest to discover an invention of historical importance in honor of Queen Victoria. Armed with only her father’s stories of a forgotten da Vinci workshop, a mechanically enhanced falcon, and an Italian cook, Amelia takes flight for Florence, Italy. But her quest is altered when her kitecycle crashes into the air ship of ex–Air Marshal—and scandalous dime novel hero—Tucker Gentry. Challenged by political unrest, a devious sky pirate, and their own sizzling attraction, Amelia and Tuck are dragged into an international conspiracy that could change the course of history…again.
Writing at the height of her powers, Alice Hoffman conjures three generations of a family haunted by love. Cool, practical, and deliberate, John is dreamy Arlyn's polar opposite. Yet the two are drawn powerfully together even when it is clear they are bound to bring each other grief. Their difficult marriage leads them and their children to a house made of glass in the Connecticutcountryside, to the avenues ofManhattan, and to the blue waters of Long Island Sound. Glass breaks, love hurts, and families make their own rules. Ultimately, it falls to their grandson, Will, to solve the emotional puzzle of his family and of his own identity.
