EDITOR’S NOTE: What follows are book reviews of three finalists for the Zonta Club of Billings’ Best Woman Writer Award. Winners will be recognized during the High Plains Book Awards on Friday.

Horses That Buck

By Margo Kahn. Published by University of Oklahoma Press.

Review by BECKY WIEHE

Margot Kahn has written, with simplicity and directness, a biographical sketch of two phases in the life of Bill Smith, World Champion Saddle Bronc Rider. It is a story about a way of life known only to the cowboys and cowgirls who travel between its dusty arenas, yet readily appreciated in this telling from the viewpoint of the man who lived it.

Bill Smith went from Bearcreek to Cody, Wyo., to begin what would become 20 years as a saddle bronc rider. During that phase of his life he experienced constant travel, considerable pain and low net income. It was all he ever wanted to do and he was unusually successful at it.

Still in his 30s and having been inducted into the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association Museum and Hall of Fame, Smith knew it was time to move into a different phase of his life. In that transition, he developed a new skill with horses. He learned “a gentle hand,” very different from his previous “get in a battle” style.

He shared that learning with others through clinics, helping people learn how to train their horses with respect and patience. He also began raising horses with his wife, Carole, which they do to this day in Thermopolis, Wyo., on their WYO Quarter Horse Ranch.

Horses That Buck is a wonderful glimpse into an unusual life and an unusual man.

Road Map to Holland

By Jennifer Graf Groneberg. published by Penguin Group

Review by ANN HEFENIEDER

I groaned when I pulled out the book from my sack of assigned reading for the Zonta Club of Billings’ Best Woman Writer Award, part of the High Plains BookFest. Jennifer Graf Groneberg’s “Road Map to Holland” had the markings of a Lifetime-movie-of-the-week tear-jerker. It’s subtitle was “How I Found My Way Through My Son’s First Two Years With Down Syndrome.” I feared the worst, but I was wrong.

Groneberg’s story is an honest retelling of her trek through the difficult first two years of son Avery’s life. She, her husband, Tom, and a toddler live in a house in the woods of northwestern Montana, and were eagerly awaiting the birth of twins.

The twins’ premature birth set the stage for Groneberg’s walk through the maze of intensive care, mounds of paperwork, insurance forms, new parent fatigue, and her own roller coaster feelings.

Along the way, she makes new friends and puzzles over the loss of an old friend. She meets caring, empathetic professionals and a few who might be more suited to work with plants, not people. More importantly, she regains control of her life, and her son’s life, researching his development mileposts, talking with other parents with Down syndrome kids, and, finally, forgiving herself for her fear:

“I think about the illusions we live with as parents. How scary everyday life with children can be. How it always seems like there’s a wolf at the door; how if you really think about it, there always is a wolf at the door. How part of parenting requires that you ignore the wolf; that you proceed as if everything is fine, and hope that it will indeed be fine. Most of the time, it works out that way.”

Groneberg takes her title from an essay by Emily Perl Kingsley, “Welcome to Holland.” The essay, included in the book, explains the experience of raising a child with a disability by comparing it to a vacation trip gone awry.

After planning a trip to Italy to see the Coliseum, you land instead in Holland. It’s not a horrible place, it’s just a different place than you planned for. Your Italian phrase book must be tossed, and you must try to learn Dutch. Also included in the book are the author’s notes, a glossary of terms, and an extensive reading list.

The Wide Open: Prose, Poetry and Photographs of the Prairie

Edited by Annick Smith and Susan O’Connor. Published by University of Nebraska Press

Review by Connie Sanders

This collection of prose narratives, poetry, and photographs of the American Plains is a fine representation of life both here and now and, sadly, an ode to what we once had and lost. There are wonderful storytellers within these 200 hardbound pages, providing both contemporary tales as well as accounts of prairie travelers of the past. We meet characters who mirror the land they choose to reside in. There’s the quiet, happily on his own, Walt Whitman-reciting, fly-fishing guide in the excerpt from David James Duncan’s novella, “What The Prairie Has To Say About Fly-Fishing.” Duncan’s character, Rolf Drager, is content in his profession and solitude, much to the chagrin of his friends.

Reel back 166 years and we visit the land through the eyes of an artist in the thoroughly entertaining account of John James Audubon’s sojourn, “An Entire Heaven and an Entire Earth” by Dan Flores.

“Consider the Great Plains that John James Audubon saw, a spectacle featuring so many animals, of so many diverse species, of such incredible numbers, that, as he wrote to his wife in 1843, he was too overcome with excitement to finish her letter.” Audubon provided us with the images of extinct and at-risk prairie dwellers, and his name today is synonymous with the necessity to conserve the land once vast and flowing with bison.

It is difficult not to feel some cautionary trepidation when reading “Bird Hunter” by Rick Bass, an account of a full season of bird hunting. Didn’t it seem at one time that we had an endless supply of species? It’s in these pages that we’re reminded of a prairie once brimming with wildlife, our own Western version of the Serengeti. Has the lesson been learned — that even our wide open space is not limitless?

I would mention all of the writers contained in this book if space allowed. I have always enjoyed Gretel Ehrlich’s writing, beginning years ago when I got lost in the pages of “The Solace of Open Spaces” and would have appreciated a longer narrative than “A Summer Journal” provided. And I very much enjoyed Annick Smith’s “Crossing The Plains With Bruno,” an account of her journey through Montana listening to poetry, with her chocolate lab as compliant companion.

Those who value images as much as words may enjoy the photography in “The Wide Open.” Lee Friedlander’s photo of the ever-present white crosses that dot our landscape and a bullet-ridden, weather beaten stop sign exhibit the essence of the plains.

I would have preferred knowing the locations to his photographs rather than each being titled “Montana Prairie.” Lois Conner captured the remoteness of undeveloped prairie in her panoramic images.

With darkroom-produced landscape images though, it is important to maintain the strong black and white values, which require much attention to burning and dodging the skies when printing. The values fell flat for me.

My ultimate favorites are the photos by Geoffrey James. His layering of clouds in his rural landscapes and the deserted homes and schoolhouse are excellent chronicles of a past life. I very much like the irony conveyed in “Hotel, Saco, 2004.” The metal newspaper racks hint that daily life moves on, as they sit in sentry next to the old hotel that has seen life move on and not return.

This is an excellent book for those of us who prefer a state like Montana, where one can look out across the Northern Plains and envision the land much as the early homesteaders might have viewed their new home. Some of these homestead ruins are depicted in the photographs … images of places where the strong and committed did their best to survive.

Even today the committed stay by choice, for love of the open land – a love that must be vastly stronger than the need for company.