Customer Reviews

Cowboy

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

Written by one of the writers for the TV show, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, Davidson is a highly intelligent, well-educated lady that meets and falls in love with a cowboy from rural Arizona. Zack, who has knowledge of life on a different level, has grown up in the tradition of the old west. He is a man who works with his hands creating original and authentic bridles from strips of leather, a long lost art form. He has yet to hear of the Holocaust or the New York Times. This unlikely relationship progresses with all the properties of oil mixed with water at times while the underlying current is one of intense sexual attraction and love.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The characters are strong and believable as odd as it might seem. You can't help but love them as they stumble along trying to make it all work. Sara is an incredible mom of two children that play a pivotal part in all of her decisions. She allows us to see her human side and shares her confusion as well as her problem solving capabilities, most of all she has heart. I for one thank her for a story well told. I can't help but wonder what part of the story is fiction. Kelsana 5/22/01

After reading Loose Change, which I thought was excellent, I decided to read Cowboy. I could not put it down because I wanted to see what happened next. The way Sara writes is funny, humorous (I like the part where she takes Gabriel to a Nine Inch Nails Concert) and intriguing. I thought it was interesting the way her stereotype about cowboys was challenged and how Zack fit into her structured life. I actually liked him because I could see where he was coming from, and I liked to see her embrace a different kind of love. I also thought the way he wanted to handle her kids' bad behavior was awesome! All in all, Cowboy was fun to read. I hope she writes another book soon!

"Cowboy" was so compelling that I read it in one day while flying to Phoenix from Michigan. I couldn't put it down. It is truly the love story between two very different individuals. Zak and Sara had so little in common yet connected in such a special way. I found I was cheering for them when things were going well and feeling the pain of their struggles. The book was written from the author's perspective but provided enough of Zak's thoughts that one could see both perspectives clearly. There was fear, desire, acceptance, frustration, and a remarkable insightful thinking that evetually leads to growth. I, too, am in touch with a cowboy in another state. This book helped me to understand the struggles we are facing and to look inside for the answers. I've read "Cowboy" three times and still discover new insights as well as enjoy the humor and real life situations only this combination of unique differences could provide. Thank you, Sara!

Boy, was I disappointed. Maybe because I loved "Loose Change" so much(admittedly, I read and loved it almost 20 years ago), I expected something deep, something insightful - but instead all I got was a shlocky romance novel written by someone with Ivy league credentials(I know that, because she beats us readers over the head with them.) All I could think of when I read this book was how mortified her real-life children must have been when they read sentences like "Zack started pumping for the finish line and I wrapped myself around him as he barreled to the edge and leapt off." I'm 40 years old and all I can say about a sentence like that is "Gag me with a spoon!"

I too read an encouraging review of this book and purchased it with great anticipation. As I read it, I got more and more annoyed. I really liked Pam Houston's "Cowboy's Are My Weakness" (boy, do I like cowboys or what?) and thought it would be similar. Wrong. It read like a Dr. Quinn episode with a lot more sex. Zack was sometimes sexy but mostly creepy, and Sara was annoying and self indulgent. The first rock I pulled on amazon.

To hear Sara Davidson tell it,she first wrote this book as a novel,only to have her advisers say it was flat as an old pancake .On the advice of marketing experts, it was sauced up,called a memoir, and will no doube become a movie,if not a video series. This is not a book .As Davidson said in her talk at the Los Angeles Times bookfest,it mixes fact and fiction to get sales . As for the cowboy. Davidson introduced him on the Roseanne show . The guy is a grandfather,inarticulate,and says he does not live with Davidson . So what have we got here ? What we have is Madison Avenue salesmanship,turned on at full blast to sell a product.This Davidson production is proof that just as America's newspapers and magazine have been dumbed down to sell folklore to semi-literates, the book business has been dumbed down even more in search of market share . Davidson might say, " So what, its entertainment." I say that when book publishers merge fact and fiction to sell the product, they are selling damaged goods to an innocent audience.This book should be looked as only as an example of the length to which the media industry will go to make a dollar .Questionable performance by all hands.Davidson will NOT wreite a book on ethics, that's for sure !

I must say I don't understand many of the mean-spirited reviews. I couldn't put this book down. It offered a door into a world I didn't know (the cowboy world and the world of TV writing), as well as a fresh and frisky examination of the nature of love. I thought the prose shimmered off the page, and the characters were indelible. Aces and diamonds to a woman brave enough to buck the tide and follow her heart--and write an insightful, moving book about the process. Forget five stars--this is ten stars!

I picked this up at the library and can't wait to exchange it for something else. The premise sounded so appealing; I was eager to read something meaningful that explored Romance at Middle Age, Improbable Matches, Overcoming Obstacles . . . what I got instead was a sense that Sara, like locker room boys, has to affirm her desirability and sexuality by sharing the graphic details with the world. I'm no prude, but as she once told her son, "That's private." And why does it seem that she is the only one who does any self-examination, hard thinking, adaptation? I so longed for her to tell Zack what HE had to be to "run with her." He challenges her, but there's not much mention of how SHE challenges HIM. The relationship may be unorthodox, but the only "meat" to it seems to exist in the bedroom. (Pun intended.)

Women will read this book for romance but it should be read by men as well so they will know how to do all the special things Zack did for Sara. Not many women have a man touch/caress, sweet talk or bring such pleasure to her and not many men know how to! I didn't read this book to dissect it for grammar or content; anyone who does is missing what Sara was trying to convey. I read it purely for the way these two people responded to each other in a way that many of us crave and never find in a lifetime. I want my own Zack!

Roughly the same age as Davidson I have long since come to the conclusion that our generation's greatest talents lie in the areas of drug/alcohol abuse, self-absorption and making money. Not content to leave well enough alone (read her 'Small Change' if you are a real glutton for punishment), Davidson plants herself in the vanguard of yet another state of higher evolution of the species (smart women with younger, ill-educated men). The core myth her work springs from is that humankind made a great epochal leap forward thanks to those kids at UC Berkeley in the 1960's. Giving narcissism a bad name, Davidson winds through more details of this latest spiritual journey to 'true love' than a reasonable person should have to bear. I soon come to admire her hunk Zach, mainly because he doesn't read. More works like this and I won't either. Another interesting (!?) thing about this book is that it is that peculiar and very popular hybrid which is either a non-ficion novel or a fictitious memoir. Dispensing with mere 'facts' in search of loftier 'emotional truths' we have this entire body of literature which seems to want it both ways. This book will sell a gazillion copies because it is a 'true' story. As a novel it would more likely head off to the obscurity it so richly deserves.