Wyoming Books

Bounty hunter Max Gardner follows a lead for his quarry, Richard Carmichael, to Serenity, Wyoming. There he reaches a dead end, unable to locate either Richard or his sister. But he does meet Reagan McKenna, a beautiful red headed widow with two teen daughters. Their banter proves they have nothing in common except mutual desire. Although Max will soon move on, they can't seem to resist growing closer in the short time they will have together.

When Max introduces himself to Reagan, he describes his job as "acquisitions." Seems appropriate since he can't possibly let the rumor mill learn either what he does or whom he seeks. Yet the more time he spends in Serenity and with Reagan, the more he wants to stay. Just one kiss makes him want all the things he's previously rejected, like permanence, picket fences, homework, a home.

When her brother unexpectedly arrives while she and Max cuddle on the front porch, Max knows he must tell Reagan the truth. But he doesn't know how he can possibly tell the woman that he loves that he's here to arrest her brother. As he gets to know Richard the following day, flying kites and chatting, Max's dilemma only becomes more complicated.

THAT WOMAN IN WYOMING is an engaging read, written with an excellent understanding of teen girls. The characters are richly developed remaining with the reader long after the last page is turned. Indeed, the rock climbing, determined daughter adds a realistic and entertaining flair to the novel, underscoring the difficult decisions parents must often make, and the mistakes they often make. Very highly recommended.

Bounty hunters Max Gardner and Donovan Reed fail to find their target Travis Carmichael, but learn his sister lives in Serenity, Wyoming. The partners are surprised that they did not know Travis even had a sibling, but since the loser is supposedly close to his sister Ronnie, Max concludes she must be just like her brother, who uses friends like disposable diapers. Angry with their boss for not informing them about a key fact that is where they should have begun, Max still persuades a reluctant Donovan to go ahead on his vacation with his new wife Holly.

While Donovan goes on to Cancun, Max travels to Wyoming where he literally runs into Reagan McKenna in the town's city hall. As Max becomes acquainted with Reagan and her teenage children, he begins to reassess his values, as he wants them in his life until he learns that Reagan is Ronnie.

THAT WOMAN IN WYOMING is an enjoyable relationship romance that brings to the reader more than just a Hometown, USA story although those Harlequins are usually fun to read. The tale provides the audience with solid characters who care about one another, even a sad sack like Travis. Readers will enjoy this warming novel because Sherry Lewis makes her audience feel right at home with Max and Reagan's extended family.

Harriet Klausner

Just came back from the Black Hills. First trip there for fly fishing. Having Kinsella's book was the next best thing to having a living guide sitting next to me while I was driving through the hills/mts.

If your heading West to do some flyishing, do yourself a favor get this very detailed book and spend a few days fishing in total solitude. Browns, Rainbows and Brook trout, the hills have all of them and this book will tell you how and where to catch them. A great find!

This is a charming book about two best friends turned lovers who are struggling to raise their children!! When a movie crew comes to Sunshine Gap to film a movie, Alexandra McBride realizes her dreams of being an actress have not died. As she struggles to come to terms with her realization, she falls for her best friend!! I have read every book in the series and every book is as good as the last!! This book will make you laugh, it will make you cry, and it will stay on the keeper shelf for years!!

URBAN COWBOY is a delightful mix of western humor and poignant emotion as Nolan--a widowed LA attorney who dropped out of the rat race to raise his son in Wyoming--and Alex--a divorced Wyoming school teacher with Hollywood dreams--move from being best of friends to best of lovers. For every woman who's been caught between career and family, this book offers hope, laughter and a few tears, not to mention a demonstration of why horses should =not= be kept in the back yard! Enjoy!

As a former deputy sheriff in the nowood valley, Ten Sleep, Wyoming, I found Mr. Davis' research and presentation outstanding. His descriptions and evaluations were right on the money. As a critical history buff, I was pleasantly surprised to find no faults or criticisms of Mr. Davis' work. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in historical jurisprudence. Things might have changed in "crime detection/investigation" but in the courtroom? not so much.

Wyoming looms large for me, and I've alluded to a recent film about Wyoming "cowboys" in other reviews. Attorney John Davis, from somewhere in the Big Horn Basin, discusses events of 2 April 1909 that put the cowboy canard in its place. Those movie cowboys aren't cowboys because they're all hat and no cattle. They're sheepherders. So were Joe Allemand, shot to death on 2 April 1909, and Joe Enge, murdered and burned in his sheep wagon on Spring Creek.

Spring Creek was the last big battle of the western sheep wars, writes Mr. Davis, and was the first (only) Wyoming raid in which killers of sheepherders were convicted of murder. The murderers of Allemand, Emge, and another herder, burned to death with Emge in his wagon, were real cowboys acting out a drama that was a tragedy of the commons. Much of Wyoming even in 1909 was unfenced open range to which cattlemen claimed rights of preemption. Sheep and their crazy herders (cowboys debated overwhelming questions: Were men already crazy before they herded sheep, or were they made crazy by the sheep they herded?) were latecomers who competed for grass and water in a dry state. Sheep wrecked the range for cattle, eating grass down to the ground and then eating the ground. Then they'd bleat and excrete, wrecking water holes. In the Big Horn Basin commons, cattlemen and cowboys tolerated sheep and sheepherders as long as they knew their place. Where there were no fences, cattlemen helpfully drew deadlines, invisible lines in the sand beyond which sheep were not allowed to cross. Allemand and Emge crossed the line.

Allemand was foreign. Some accounts say he was Baszue; Davis writes that he was French. Allemand was an alien in an occupation dominated by Mexicans and Basques whose lives had been cheap. Mr. Allemand, though, was liked and respected by his neighbors despite being from somewhere else and despite sheep. Nobody wrote that he was crazy. Emge was foreign, but had been respected because he had been a cattleman before going to the dark side, sheep. He did not know his place. He kept his bovine arrogance despite turning to a disreputable occupation, sheep, and he openly disrespected his old cowboy cronies and their deadline. Emge, of course, represented something new under the hot Wyoming sun: old certitudes were dying. Wyoming, as territory and state, had run cattle and had been run by cattle. But Wyoming in the new 20th Century was born again; by 1909 Wyoming sheep were worth more than Wyoming cattle, and even founding fathers like cattle kings F.E. Warren & J.M. Carey were changing with the times. By 1909 cattle kings were running sheep.

That's the context of the story Mr. Davis tells. It's the story of an insular area, almost inbred, that was almost ripped apart by the aftermath of an atavistic raid. Davis excerpts Grand Jury transcripts that show communities and neighbors being pushed and pulled by the old and the new. He tells a story far more interesting than the fey fable that was nominated today for eight Academy Awards.

Old West showman William 'Buffalo Bill' Cody was more than just a notorious outlaw: he was a land developer, town promoter, and showman. WILLIAM F. CODY'S WYOMING EMPIRE: THE BUFFALO BILL NOBODY KNOWS is a blend of history and biography especially suitable for college-level American history collections focusing on frontier times: it surveys his life, offers over twenty photos, and considers the reality behind the character. An engrossing, different portrait stands out from the crowd of books on Cody's life and career.

Buffalo Bill Cody was America's first celebrity and probably the best advertised name in the world at the time his Wild West Show took to feeding Americans a comforting myth about its conquest of the west. He was a double impostor who aspired to turn his iconic image as an heroic frontiersman into status as a capitalist of consequence.

The book deals with Cody's concerted but ineffectual quest to develop his own corner of Wyoming. Although he was a big name and tireless promoter, his enterprises were doomed by his lack of real business skill or follow-through, exacerbated by his rock star travel schedule and his choice of the arid Big Horn Basin as the place he would will his empire into being.

Cody was not a con artist so much as a show business artist, with emphasis on the show, not the business. Though his show made him rich enough to put him with East Coast aristocrats, Cody sought to earn their company on a higher footing. In this respect, he prefigured today's calculating and self-inflating celebrities, particularly Schwarzenegger the body builder and Trump the bankrupt developer.

In later years, Cody's influence grew weaker as the government bureaus he sought to exploit moved from political patronage to professional management, and real businessmen backed by serious capital came in with the railroads.

Bonner is a fine writer, but his subject is probably too narrow for readers without a stake in the west or an interest in western history. He purposely avoids the well-documented Wild West side of Cody to tell a less celebrated tale of attempts to settle public lands, and in particular, the importance of bringing water into the region.

Cody's story ends with corporate interests and eastern capital opening much of the west and sweeping aside, if need be, the rugged individualists who are enshrined in western mythology -- whether they were dry dirt farmers or the most famous man in the world.

The pictures were excellent and the stories, for the most part were quite interesting. If you've ever wondered what life in Wyoming is REALLY like, you must read this book.

I too grew up in Wyo. and this book features one of the most interesting cross-sections of the rugged individuals that live there. I purchased it because my brother is featured in it (horseshoer, p. 130), but my friends and family are fascinated by it. It is a featured "coffee-table" book in our home.

A very readable memoir; well written. Good bits of real life in the years around 1900. Some good humor as well. It gave me a feel of the time as I read.

Born in 1871, Edward J. Farlow left his Iowa home at the age of fifteen to follow the life of a cowboy in Wyoming Territory. This colorful tale is footnoted with historical documentation that will delight and surprise the reader. The author includes history capsules of the Hollywood film industry, the government's attempts to "tame" the Shoshone and Arapahoe Indians, his experiences with Native Americans at a time when they were being "reservationed" and his interesting accounts of cattle ranching as it blossomed in Fremont County. WIND RIVER ADVENTURES brings to life an era of misunderstanding, great promise and what would eventually become the western way of life. It takes the reader through territorial times, statehood for Wyoming and the plight of two small tribes of Native American Indians as seen through the eyes of an adopted son of the Arapahoe Tribe. As a memoir this is a great read and as a reference tool it is well-documented and very well indexed. I recommend this book to any person interested in western history.

Ed Bryant brings an elegance and texture to his short fiction that one usually assigns to the "serious" contemporary writers.

That he has chosen to work in the realm of the speculative is the rich gain of genre fiction fans everywhere. Bryant's stories, set in his adoptive home state, are sometimes unsettling, sometimes wondrous, but always populated with people who live, breathe, love and feel pain. Take a trip with him to Wyoming, and you'll never feel quite the same about the West or the human heart again.

Wyoming Sun is an excellent collection of hard-to-classify short stories. The stories range from folksy to futuristic and all are based in Wyoming's sometimes inhospitable and always changing wild terrain. This collection is a must-have for any resident of Wyoming and any serious collector of speculative fiction.

Cattleman's daughter Rachel Tolliver believed that sheep ranchers like Luke Vincente had no business out on the open range. Yet despite his troubled past, he was an honorable man, driven by a passion for the west, and for her. But the range war brewing would surely forbid any declration of their wildfire love.

Rachel Tolliver's story takes place in 1901 when she is 22 years old.
She is the adopted daughter of Morgan Tolliver and Cassie [Wyoming Widow]- she is returning to the family ranch after spending 3 years in the East - taking art lessons?

This is cattle country. Wouldn't you know that she runs into a sheep man, Luke Vincente, or at least his sheep. Her old mule is traveling too fast? and she has no brakes and rather than tear through the flock of sheep crossing the road she ditches in a gully.
Yup! she is stuck in the mud and in the way of a gully washer.
Oh, yeah, some four miscreants are trying to drive the sheep over the steep side of the trail.
Luke has her hide in the rocks and while he and his dogs turn the sheep Rachel gets a look at one of the men[?] Was that one of her brothers? Jacob or Josh? a pair of twins about 18.

There is a lot of hype of emotions and distrust and hormones as Rachel slowly learns that her safe, secure world is not so safe anymore.

What would her parents say if she spent the night with Luke.
What were her brothers doing harassing a sheep herder and possibly causing the death of the old sheepherder.

Now we hear of the Tolliver family and their doings and are reaquainted with Chang's family and of course, the villians of the story.

Guess what? Ryan and his wife Molly show up to pull the family story together. Great story. excellent trilogy - another one coming??? in March 2006 - Wyoming Wildfire.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - You may really like this set.

The Wind River Range is spectacular and lonely, and this book takes you there -- nature, history, glorious photographs. I can't recommend it enough, both for the arm chair traveler and for the visitor to Wyoming.

Joe Kelsey's love letter to Wyoming's Wind River Range finally brings pictures to match the mountains. An acknowleged expert on the peaks and valleys of the Winds, his selection of photographs is perfect counterpoint to the crisp, slightly awestruck descriptions of the range. This is the perfect book for those long winter nights spent waiting for the mountains to open up again.