Customer Reviews

Cowboy Romance: (Of Horsesweat And Hornflies) (Volume 2)

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All those late-night John Wayne movies or old episodes of Rawhide got you hankerin' for the freedom and romance of the cowboy life? Started listening to old Sons of the Pioneers songs while commuting to the office? Well, be sure to read "Cowboy Romance" before you trade your Toyota Land Cruiser for an old beat-up Ford pickup and head for the hills. This book will set you straight on the cowboy life, and it's sure not about sitting around the campfire singing "Old Paint" while pretty cowgirls swoon.

Bob Kinford, the cowboy who wrote the book, is that rare blend of good cowpuncher and good writer. Bob's company, the "Too Lazy for You Livestock and Literary Company," underscores these talents. The book is well-designed and the illustrator, James Dorrance, is as talented as I've seen anywhere. In the introduction to the book, Bob asks: "If it isn't romance, freedom, or big money, what is it that makes one earn his living as a cowboy? As soon as I find out, I'll let you know, because I haven't the foggiest idea."

But Bob does know, and after you read his stories (all true), you begin to get a glimmer. Actually, he gives you a hint in the introduction, when he says, "So in spite of the broken bones, frostbitten fingers, and poverty, you press on for whatever the moments of pure pain and pure pleasure are worth, for without one you cannot truly appreciate the other." Bob's stories will have you in stitches, but they also are real and show you what price these men pay for their hard-won independence and freedom. It's a price most of are too lazy or too insecure (we want that retirement plan) to want to pay, so we'll read the book, laugh, and wish we could have more adventure in our lives, then (perhaps wisely, but the loss is ours) go back to the office. Great book!

I was given a copy of this book by the author's uncle (my sister's ex-husband & one of the best storytellers I ever heard). Bob carries on a family tradition. Can't anyone but a cowboy tell stories like this! Funny and very probably a lot of truth in there...can't anything complicate life faster than putting a cow, a horse & a cowboy together...anywhere. Great read.

March 1999 issue of Western Horseman says "Bob Kinford has mastered the genre...he puts tongue in cheek and dares the reader to find romance in his west."