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Cowgirl Dreams #2
Follow the Dream: A Novel
In this sequel to Cowgirl Dreams, Nettie Brady, now Nettie Moser, is working with her husband Jake to prepare for a busy rodeo season when she's offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel to London to perform with the Tex Austin Wild West Troupe. When fate once again interferes with her dreams, Nettie finds herself overcoming challenges only to set aside her passions. As Nettie and Jake work to keep their horse herd from disaster and to preserve their way of life, the realities of the Great Depression separate them.
Based on the life of the author's grandmother, a real Montana Cowgirl, Follow the Dream, reveals the story of the real Montana in the mid-Twentieth Century and continues the sweeping family saga begun in Cowgirl Dreams.
Based on the life of the author's grandmother, a real Montana Cowgirl, Follow the Dream, reveals the story of the real Montana in the mid-Twentieth Century and continues the sweeping family saga begun in Cowgirl Dreams.
240 pages, Paperback
First published September 21, 2010
About the author
Heidi M. Thomas
16 books29 followersI'm a Montana native, and recently moved from the Pacific Northwest to northwest Arizona. I have a journalism degree, teach memoirs and beginning fiction classes and do freelance editing. I have published the "Cowgirl Dreams" novel trilogy: Cowgirl Dreams (EPIC Award Winner), Follow the Dream, a WILLA-Award Winner, and Dare to Dream (Finalist International Book Awards); a non-fiction book Cowgirl Up! A History of Rodeo Women (Winner Global E-book Awards); and two books in the "American Dreams" series, Seeking the American Dream and Finding True Home.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 18, 2011
Follow the Dream – Review by Martha A. Cheves, Author of Stir, Laugh, Repeat
‘She ticked off the places they’d lived since she and Jake were married. Twenty-four times she’d picked up and moved since their honeymoon days on the Davis Place nearly fifteen years ago. Twenty-four times packing up their few belongings. They’d never really stayed anywhere long enough to accumulate much. Twenty-four times of setting up camp in a tent, squeezing into a hotel room, or cleaning a mouse-infested abandoned shack, even a granary, for heaven’s sake. Moving around would’ve been different if they’d been part of the rodeo world. But that dream hadn’t come true. Then she’d settled for the one about having their own place. Someday. Always someday. Did other women have to endure this kind of life? She twisted the ring on her left hand. Jake was a good man, good-hearted, hardworking. He’d had his ambitions too, his visions blown away in the dust, swallowed by new-fangled machines, strangled by the death-throes of the only way of life they’d ever known. Easterners taking over farming, corporate ranches, machines making horses obsolete. What was to become of the life of the cowboy? Of Jake’s life? Selling his horses could be the last straw.’
When Nettie and Jake married they became partners. They would follow the rodeo tours and win the top prizes making names for themselves. Nettie was even offered a chance to show off her riding abilities, both horse and steer, in England when some of her friends decided to take the show across the waters. But then the unexpected hit. Nettie was pregnant, which not only stopped her from touring but it also stopped her from riding. It also meant that she and Jake must settle down and start thinking about their future.
Work in the 1920s and 1930s had become rather hard to find but Jake knew there would always be a demand for work horses so he and Nettie decided that breeding and selling their draft horses would be the perfect source of income. That was before the big drought hit resulting in them searching for “greener pastures” and the promise of eventually coming back to their families and buying their own ranch.
As I read Follow the Dream I couldn’t help but think about the times of today. Our financial futures and/or lack of them. Follow the Dream has made me realize just how strong our families of the past had to be. The hardships they went through just to get us where we are today. And with each generation, we seemed to weaken just a bit. We have become soft in our tolerance of problems and pain. I don’t believe I know of a person who would go through the hardships that Nettie, Jake and their son Neil went through and still keep a family together. Follow the Dream is a wonderful, heartwarming story of love, not just of a family, but a love for life. The sequel to Cowgirl Dreams, both are suitable for adult and young adult readers.
266 pages
Sundowners and Mountain View Publishing, divisions of Treble Heart Books
2010
ISBN# 978-1-936127-18-4
Review Stir, Laugh, Repeat at Amazon.com Stir, Laugh, Repeat
‘She ticked off the places they’d lived since she and Jake were married. Twenty-four times she’d picked up and moved since their honeymoon days on the Davis Place nearly fifteen years ago. Twenty-four times packing up their few belongings. They’d never really stayed anywhere long enough to accumulate much. Twenty-four times of setting up camp in a tent, squeezing into a hotel room, or cleaning a mouse-infested abandoned shack, even a granary, for heaven’s sake. Moving around would’ve been different if they’d been part of the rodeo world. But that dream hadn’t come true. Then she’d settled for the one about having their own place. Someday. Always someday. Did other women have to endure this kind of life? She twisted the ring on her left hand. Jake was a good man, good-hearted, hardworking. He’d had his ambitions too, his visions blown away in the dust, swallowed by new-fangled machines, strangled by the death-throes of the only way of life they’d ever known. Easterners taking over farming, corporate ranches, machines making horses obsolete. What was to become of the life of the cowboy? Of Jake’s life? Selling his horses could be the last straw.’
When Nettie and Jake married they became partners. They would follow the rodeo tours and win the top prizes making names for themselves. Nettie was even offered a chance to show off her riding abilities, both horse and steer, in England when some of her friends decided to take the show across the waters. But then the unexpected hit. Nettie was pregnant, which not only stopped her from touring but it also stopped her from riding. It also meant that she and Jake must settle down and start thinking about their future.
Work in the 1920s and 1930s had become rather hard to find but Jake knew there would always be a demand for work horses so he and Nettie decided that breeding and selling their draft horses would be the perfect source of income. That was before the big drought hit resulting in them searching for “greener pastures” and the promise of eventually coming back to their families and buying their own ranch.
As I read Follow the Dream I couldn’t help but think about the times of today. Our financial futures and/or lack of them. Follow the Dream has made me realize just how strong our families of the past had to be. The hardships they went through just to get us where we are today. And with each generation, we seemed to weaken just a bit. We have become soft in our tolerance of problems and pain. I don’t believe I know of a person who would go through the hardships that Nettie, Jake and their son Neil went through and still keep a family together. Follow the Dream is a wonderful, heartwarming story of love, not just of a family, but a love for life. The sequel to Cowgirl Dreams, both are suitable for adult and young adult readers.
266 pages
Sundowners and Mountain View Publishing, divisions of Treble Heart Books
2010
ISBN# 978-1-936127-18-4
Review Stir, Laugh, Repeat at Amazon.com Stir, Laugh, Repeat
October 29, 2014
Book two in Heidi Thomas’s “Dream” trilogy opens much like the first, with Nettie ready to challenge another 900-pound steer. As she climbs on the animal’s back she thrills to the realization her dreams are coming true. She’s married to her handsome cowboy, they live on a beautiful Montana ranch, and they’re going to rodeo. The animal lunges forward, bucking violently, and the next thing Nettie knows she’s flat on her back on the hard ground looking up at the sky. The scene foreshadows Nettie’s dilemma of life getting in the way of her dream.
Things look much rosier when cowgirl star Marie Gibson shares an invitation for Nettie to ride in a big London show. Life’s next setback: Nettie gets pregnant. London is out.
Even the weather offers a major setback when drought sears the land until it can’t produce enough grass to keep Jake and Nettie’s horse herd from starving, so they have to take the herd on a long, perilous drive to greener pastures.
While the first book starts in the 1920s, this one moves from the mid-1920s into the 1930s. For Montana ranchers, as for the rest of the country, those years lead inexorably into the Depression, a major killer of dreams.
Somehow Nettie has to keep going and keep trying, as another dream takes hold. She wants to keep her family together and still ranch, while keeping women like herself in the rodeo circuit.
As with the first book in this series based on the life of Thomas’s grandmother who rode bucking stock in rodeos, this story shows appealing characters struggling sometimes with each other, sometimes against, in a setting that brings the time and the place to life. It’s a place Thomas knows well, having grown up on a working ranch in this same raw, wild land. Another delightful read.
Things look much rosier when cowgirl star Marie Gibson shares an invitation for Nettie to ride in a big London show. Life’s next setback: Nettie gets pregnant. London is out.
Even the weather offers a major setback when drought sears the land until it can’t produce enough grass to keep Jake and Nettie’s horse herd from starving, so they have to take the herd on a long, perilous drive to greener pastures.
While the first book starts in the 1920s, this one moves from the mid-1920s into the 1930s. For Montana ranchers, as for the rest of the country, those years lead inexorably into the Depression, a major killer of dreams.
Somehow Nettie has to keep going and keep trying, as another dream takes hold. She wants to keep her family together and still ranch, while keeping women like herself in the rodeo circuit.
As with the first book in this series based on the life of Thomas’s grandmother who rode bucking stock in rodeos, this story shows appealing characters struggling sometimes with each other, sometimes against, in a setting that brings the time and the place to life. It’s a place Thomas knows well, having grown up on a working ranch in this same raw, wild land. Another delightful read.
August 22, 2015
This is the sequel to Cowgirl Dreams. It was even better as she heads into adult life, being married, going through the Dust Bowl and times of drought, the fall of the economy in the U.S. It taught me so many things. One is that I have it easy. Her life was so hard and she came upon people who even had it harder.
On page 183, when the man who used to be a banker, George, asks for a piece of bread and gets that and some soup. He tells his sad story and goes to leave. He has bloody rags as shoes. Nettie gives him her husbands old boots. He was so grateful. His sentence startles all of them about being given more to eat.
"....My sufficiency has been surronsified; any more would be obnoxious to my fastidious taste."
After not being able to go on the rodeo tour many times and her friend dieing, Nettie found she had to change her dreams. Her mom explains that she still dreams. She "simply been able to change it. Not give up on dreaming, but just allow another one to take the place of the one that was not to be."(p 236).
It was interesting how the technology of the times changed. Jake was a horse rancher in a time when tractors and engines were coming into play. He could no longer rely on what he'd done all his life to make money. He had to change. Change is hard when it means leaving creatures that you love and a certain life style. He was heart broken when they put on a rodeo to make money and no one hardly came because of lack of interest.
On page 183, when the man who used to be a banker, George, asks for a piece of bread and gets that and some soup. He tells his sad story and goes to leave. He has bloody rags as shoes. Nettie gives him her husbands old boots. He was so grateful. His sentence startles all of them about being given more to eat.
"....My sufficiency has been surronsified; any more would be obnoxious to my fastidious taste."
After not being able to go on the rodeo tour many times and her friend dieing, Nettie found she had to change her dreams. Her mom explains that she still dreams. She "simply been able to change it. Not give up on dreaming, but just allow another one to take the place of the one that was not to be."(p 236).
It was interesting how the technology of the times changed. Jake was a horse rancher in a time when tractors and engines were coming into play. He could no longer rely on what he'd done all his life to make money. He had to change. Change is hard when it means leaving creatures that you love and a certain life style. He was heart broken when they put on a rodeo to make money and no one hardly came because of lack of interest.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 27, 2015
The whole series is great but I particularly liked this one. The time period, Nettie's hard family life, and still touching the dream she's had since a little girl.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews