In One Hundred Horses this award-winning author has interwoven stage and screen plays to create a novel in dialog. A brief memoir and photograph album of inspiration introduce each of the six chapters. These family-friendly, realistic, dramatic cowboy romances include details about ranch, reservation, and border life; immigration, healthy food, horseshoeing, and a Shakespearean version of horse training. The author lived the life she writes about and provides authentic glimpses into traditional cowboy etiquette, universal rural values, and the rewards of hard work. Chapter tension tackles the pros and cons of patriarchy, feminism, pride, horse training, jealousy, trust, patience, respect, misrepresentation, reconnaissance, and injury. Characters include a chuckwagon cook, Mexican illegal, Hispanic school teacher, female horseshoer, casino boss, California farmer, Las Vegas rodeo stock contractor, Marine veterans, Native American ranchers, law officers, and cowgirls. Of course the cast also includes hundreds of horses who patiently and silently assist, challenge, and improve the humans in countless ways.
Nelson, Barbara Barney J.: - "Barbara "Barney" Nelson, PhD has been a freelance cowboy journalist since 1971 while making her actual living in various jobs, most recently as a college professor at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas. She is the author or anthologist of eight books and countless magazine and professional journal articles. Retired, she now carries water in a bucket to birds, mule deer, javelinas, grey foxes, raccoons, and whatever other wildlife comes to her door for a drink. She also writes a weekly column for a tiny weekly newspaper, The Jeff Davis County Mountain Dispatch. A direct descendant of Mayflower Pilgrim, William Bradford, she likes to claim that even though she owns only a few acres today, her family has been in the agriculture business on this continent for fourteen generations, seventeen counting her grandchildren. Critics have praised her previous books: Making Circles: The Memoir of a Cowboy Journalist (2021)Western Writers of America Spur Award Finalist for Best Western Contemporary Nonfiction "It belongs in all collections of books about Western culture; it particularly belongs in all university libraries featuring studies of the West. It is a treasure trove of insight." -Tom Bailey. The Wild and the Domestic(2000) "Her informed and loving voice for our responsible use of land, our responsibility for other species, and responsible living provides a vital and seldom articulated perspective on ranching and the rancher's stewardship." - Mary Clearman Blew"Barney Nelson has written a stunning book . . . deserves to be ranked with the best writers of the century."--Linda Hasselstrom. Voices and Visions of the American West(1986) "As good as the photos are, . . . . it is the words between the images that make this book so special . . . . She has made this book wonderful by allowing the people who actually live the cowboy life to tell us what they are feeling, what they know, and why they do what they do."--Darrell Arnold"
