Thirty years of browbeating from rancher Bud Smalls has penned his wife, Leah, into emotional isolation. Now Bud is gone and Leah owns the ranch, but no help is forthcoming from Bud's brothers who want to force her out and take the ranch for themselves. When their attempt to humiliate her instead becomes her opportunity to make her ranch succeed, Leah begins to find her way back to herself and learns how much she can gain by opening her heart.
The Widow Smalls is just of one of the stories in this award-winning collection by the WILLA Award winning author of Unbroken, Jamie Lisa Forbes, who writes from her experience about the hardships of making a life on the land. Her deftly drawn characters include star-crossed lovers, a young rancher facing his first test of moral courage, an inscrutable ranch hand claiming a famous relative, a father making one last grasp for his favorite daughter's love and a child's struggle to make sense of the world around her. Each one of these characters will pull readers into the middle of their stories and keep them turning the pages.
Winner High Plains Book Award--short stories--2015
Autorentext
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 of life in the rural West, Unbroken, won the WILLA Literary Award for Contemporary Fiction in 2011. Her collection of short stories based on the lives and experiences found in the rural West, entitled 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.Sunny Gale--A Novel has received the following accolades: 2025 Will Rogers Silver Medallion--historical fiction category; 2025 Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist--historical fiction category; 2025 Feathered Quill Book Award Finalist--women's fiction category; Listed in Kirkus Reviews Best Indie Books of 2024; Kirkus Reviews starred review. Ms. Forbes continues to live-and write-in North Carolina.