Genre: Historical Fiction, Literary Novel
Content Rating: PG-13 +M: There is no profane language. There are some sexual scenes, non explicit. There is one instance of sexual abuse that is more recollected than described. My specific reason for giving this rating was two scenes where animals are harmed intentionally.
“Those who have an interest in historical fiction…will find this book enlightening. It’s an eye-opening read and an evocative mixture of fact and fiction.” Michaela Gordoni for Portland Book Review.
“Forbes showcases her remarkable storytelling skills, promising readers an unforgettable experience.” Suzie Housley for Midwest Book Review
It’s 1895 and fourteen year old Hannah Brandt is struggling with the hard life on a new Nebraska homestead. When her imagination is captured by a wild filly she becomes obsessed with horses, which opens the door to her destiny. Just four years later she enters the first Cheyenne Frontier Day rodeo where she wins the relay race and her fate is sealed. She gives herself a new name, Sunny Gale, and pursues a rodeo career, much to the disgust of her young husband and her very proper mother. Sunny defies convention with every move as the drive to compete takes over her life, leaving everything else behind, including husbands and children. It is a rough life she has chosen, but she craves the glory of the spotlight and refuses to bow to the expectations for a woman in her time.
Award winning author Jamie Lisa Forbes has once again brought us complex characters in a story based on real women and the early days when rodeo was wide open for them to become stars. It is a story of the social mores of the times and of a woman determined to defy them no matter how high the personal cost or where that choice might take her.
Meet the Author:
Jamie Lisa Forbes was raised on a ranch in the Little Laramie Valley near Laramie, Wyoming. She attended the University of Colorado where she obtained degrees in English and philosophy. After fourteen months living in Israel, she returned to her family’s ranch where she lived for another fifteen years.
In 1994, she moved to Greensboro, North Carolina. In 2001, she graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Law and began her North Carolina law practice.
Forbes’ first novel, Unbroken, won the WILLA Literary Award for Contemporary Fiction in 2011. Her collection of short stories, The Widow Smalls and Other Stories, won the High Plains Book Awards for a short story collection in 2015.
Forbes’ novel of rural North Carolina in the segregation era, entitled Eden, was published in 2020. Her historical novel about women bronc riders in the early days of rodeo, entitled Sunny Gale, was published in May 2024 by Pronghorn Press.
Ms. Forbes continues to live—and write—in North Carolina.
Connect with the author: website ~ facebook ~ pinterest ~ X ~ goodreads
