The Secret Life of Cowboys
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
"One of the stories I tell myself when I am trying to fall asleep is that I have tried. I've tagged along after myself in the pages of my own modern Western, and every few years is another chapter to the story. The myth of the cowboy. I chased a dream and it kicked me in the teeth. Yet I find myself falling for it again and again."
Across the rugged and beautiful landscape of the contemporary American West, Tom Groneberg paints an unsparing portrait of his flawed, funny, and sometimes triumphant efforts to become a cowboy. It is a classic tale: a young man, facing a future he doesn't want to claim, has an inspiration -- Go West.
Leaving behind his friends and family, Groneberg follows his heart and heads to a resort town in the Colorado Rockies, where he earns his spurs as a wrangler leading tourists on horseback. Like an old saddle blanket, the tale unfolds, revealing the clean threads of a new story. Groneberg moves to Montana, working for wages at a number of ranches before getting a chance to become the owner of a sprawling ranch, fifteen square miles of grass and sky.
In lean but passionate prose, Groneberg demystifies the image of cowboy as celluloid hero and introduces us to the tough and kindhearted men who teach him how to be a real cowboy, the woman who teaches him how to love, and their son, who teaches him how to be a man. The Secret Life of Cowboys is both a coming-of-age story as stunning as the land itself and a revealing look at America's last frontier.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This book's jacket (of a cowboy and his shopping cart in a supermarket frozen-food aisle) perfectly sets the tone for its offbeat theme: an account of Groneberg's evolution from Chicago suburbs to Montana ranches. Graduating from college with a degree in English and rhetoric, Groneberg, who writes for Big Sky Journal, Out and Sports Afield, shuns a traditional career. He spots an ad in the Utne Reader: "Hard work with horses in a beautiful setting." Following up, Groneberg summers at a Colorado ranch and is hooked. He moves to Montana, "a place where you can stretch your eyeballs," viewing his new life as almost fictional: "I will tell you a story about a hapless English major, a hopeless dreamer who finds a job guiding trail rides in Colorado. He falls in love with the West and a horse and a girl. Later he finds work on a ranch in Montana. He drives an hour each way, labors for ten hours a day and earns $210 a week. He marries the girl. And later still, he becomes part owner and full-time manager of nearly 10,000 acres.... It is the story I tell myself." However, the story this buckaroo tells readers takes a darker turn. Groneberg attends rodeo school, but bronc bruises are minor compared to the trials of running a ranch, which triggers a knotted stomach, depression and psychiatric sessions. "I chased a dream and it kicked me in the teeth." Groneberg succeeds as cowboy and poet, tossing a saddle on his soul and riding into the shadows: "Night is gathering. I can smell the burning stars." , could corral readers who yearn to escape concrete for the heartland.
