Читать книгу The Wrangler - Lindsay McKenna - Страница 6

Dear Reader:

The Wrangler comes from my background of growing up in the rural West. Our neighbors were ranchers, sheepherders or farmers. At one time, we had a milk cow named Elizabeth. At six years old, I learned how to milk. Of course, our barn cats loved milking time, too. They would line up near my stool as I milked Elizabeth. I would take one teat and squirt the stream of warm milk toward the nearest cat. She would stand up on her hind legs, mouth open, gulping it down. Not a drop of milk ever hit the wooden floor. Or the time when a neighbor’s milk cow had a calf and we got to watch it being birthed. I was lucky enough to have such experiences, and inevitably they end up in the pages of one of my books. I can only write what I know and share it with you. It’s not always the big events of life that we remember, but the small, emotionally satisfying ones. Such as giving milk to the kitties at 5:00 a.m. on a chilly morning.

Ranching and farming are a hard way of life, but a worthy one in my opinion. My husband and I bred, raised and showed Arabian horses for a decade in Ohio. My love of horses has been around since I was a three-year-old, when I was put in the saddle for the first time. Being close to the earth, working with it, not against it, brings a fondness to my heart. People raised in cities never know the joy of sitting in a saddle, mending a fence line, digging post holes, working on an old truck engine or repairing a hay baler. They’ve never seen real milk come from a cow. Or heard the bleat of a newborn lamb, or watched the struggling efforts of a tiny foal trying to get to her feet for the first time.

I hope to translate my rural life experiences to you in the Wyoming series. Griff McPherson is Slade’s twin brother. You met Slade in The Last Cowboy. For Griff, born on a cattle ranch in Wyoming, his life is suddenly upended by tragedy. At only five years old, he lost his parents in a car accident. Luckily his uncle from New York City rescued him from a foster home and took him in. Griff went from rural to city life. And along the way he lost his Wyoming soul. This is a story of redemption. Many people are thrown brutal curves in life. Somehow their heart, their inner knowing can act like an unerring compass. It can help them turn around and head in the right direction. Griff is about to make a life-changing decision. Will his Wyoming genes trump the call of rich city life or not?

Lindsay McKenna