The Long Ride Home
by
Kari Lynn Dell
Blurb
David Parsons is on the verge of making his pro rodeo dreams come true when his one-in-a-million rope horse, Muddy, goes missing. In the aftermath, David loses everything. His career, his fiancée´, his pride.
Four years later, David is clawing his way out of the ruins and back up the rankings when he gets the miracle he’s prayed for. Muddy has been found on Montana’s Blackfeet Indian Reservation.
But repossessing Muddy is unexpectedly complicated. Kylan, the teenager on Muddy’s back, has had a lifetime of hard knocks. His custodial aunt, Mary Steele, will fight like a mama bear to make sure losing this horse isn’t the blow that levels the boy. Even if it’s at David’s expense.
David is faced with a soul-wrenching dilemma. Taking back his own future could destroy Kylan’s. And ruin any chance he might have with the fierce, fascinating Mary.
It’s a long, hard ride to the top of the rodeo world. And for David, an even longer ride home. Unless he can find a trail that leads to both.
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Guest Post
Last weekend I had my first ever book release party. That, in itself, was pretty cool, but I got to have it at the country school where I attended first through eighth grade. Due to a shortage of kids it closed for many years, but it has recently been rescued. Many of the people who attended the party had lived in our community and either gone to school there themselves or had kids who did, so it was an awesome experience to relive old memories and talk about a brand new book, all in one party.
People always have two questions about my education. First, how far do you have to live from town to go to a country school? In our case, fifty-five miles. The first two and half are my driveway, the next eight is gravel, then you finally get to the highway, which is where my son now catches the bus to town every school day. And the second question? Yep. Eat your heart out. Because the fourteen or so kids were all lumped together with only two teachers, I got recess clear through the eighth grade.
Then came ninth grade and I had to go to town. Keep in mind, this was the town where I was born. The one that has always been considered my hometown. And when I started high school, I knew exactly six people and three of them were related to me. We are talking HICK, capital letters.
One of the great, pervasive myths about Montana is that everyone who grows up in a small town is a cowboy or a farmer. Couldn’t be farther from the truth. In our town, the majority of the population knows just shy of nothing about cows or horses or rodeo. And when you’re one of those small town kids who wants nothing more than to be considered cool by the bigger town kids, it really gravels your butt when they assume you’re a hick, too. Which does not make them look kindly upon the true hicks.
As Barbara Mandrell once sang, “I was country when country wasn’t cool.”
They called us the shitkickers. My husband got the same treatment at his high school but since his town had thirty thousand people, there were at least a dozen other guys just like him to hang out with so he couldn’t care less. There were three of us in my class and I was the only girl. I learned pretty fast to downplay my country side. No cowboy boots or Wranglers in school. No stories about the rodeo I competed in last weekend, win or lose. I had two completely separate lives. My town life, with my town clothes and my town friends, and my weekend and summer ranch and rodeo life with my rodeo friends. The two never mixed.
Fast forward twenty years. I was working as an athletic trainer in Pendleton, Oregon and had summers off and a single-wide with crappy air conditioning, so while my husband was at work I spent a lot of time at the library reading, or at home watching television. After plowing through a few contemporary western movies and several novels, I was profoundly dissatisfied. The characters and settings didn’t ring true to the life I lived. So I decided to write a book of my own. Because how hard could it be, right?
Yeah. Right.
I was determined to make cowboys and cowgirls cool. Not a scrap of gingham in sight. They would be modern and savvy and like many of my acquaintances, as comfortable in the city as they were on the range. With that in mind, I wrote four books, the third of which garnered me an agent. I had it made.
Almost.
I turned in my next manuscript, a romantic suspense, and she sent it back. “Where’s the rodeo stuff? You have a cowboy, but he’s not doing any rodeo stuff.”
And I said, “Well, yeah, that’s because he’s busy doing all this other cool, mystery-solving stuff.”
And she reached through cyberspace and gave me a Gibbs-slap on the back of the head and said, “Hey, dummy, the cowboy stuff IS the cool stuff. Half of Hollywood’s A-list is moving to the northwest and calling themselves ranchers. People LOVE cowboys. They fantasize about being you.”
Huh. Who would’ve thought? Somewhere along the way, while I wasn’t paying attention, I went from being a shitkicker to living the dream. So I put my mind to doing what I’d meant to do in the beginning. Pulling readers into my world and making them smell the dirt, feel the hard twist of a rope in their hand, hear the thump of their heart as they ride into the arena.
I’m pleased to say that early readers of The Long Ride Home are saying I accomplished my goal. As for the other, well, it’s still hard to believe there are thousands of people who fantasize about standing in my Muck boots. I had to remind myself again yesterday afternoon, as I waded through ankle deep slop and pitchforked piles of afterbirth out of the calving barn.
Here I am. Just livin’ the dream.
About Kari Lynn
Kari Lynn Dell is a native of north central Montana, a third generation ranch-raised cowgirl, horse trainer and rodeo competitor, most recently the 2013 Canadian Senior Pro Rodeo Association Breakaway Roping Champion. She attended her first rodeo at two weeks old and has existed in a state of horse-induced poverty ever since. She currently resides on the family ranch on the Blackfeet Reservation, loitering in her parents’ bunkhouse along with her husband, son, and Max the Cowdog, with a tipi on the front step, a view of Glacier National Park from her writing desk and Canada within spitting distance.
Come visit at KariLynnDell.com, hear what’s next on the publication front, learn firsthand about ranch life on the east slope of Rockies, and laugh with us at the tales of woe and wonder that come with living on the norther frontier. Really, someone should be filming this stuff. Occasionally, I do.
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