FEATURED AUTHOR: DEBORAH SWIFT
I am pleased to host Lynn Downey the featured author in The Coffee Pot Book Club Blog Tour being held between February 12th — March 4th, 2024. Lynn Downey is the author of the Historical Fiction, Dude or Die (H Double Bar Dude Ranch series), released by Pronghorn Press on October 15 2023 (328 pages)
Below are highlights of Dude or Die, Lynn Downey'a author bio, and her fascinating guest post about the American dude ranch where you find the touch of a cowboy and the thrill of the West.
Tour Schedule Page: https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2024/01/blog-tour-dude-or-die-by-lynn-downey.html
HIGHLIGHTS: DUDE OR DIE
Dude or Die
(H Double Bar Dude Ranch series)
by Lynn Downey
Blurb:
It's 1954, and San Francisco writer Phoebe Kelley is enjoying the success of her first novel, Lady in the Desert. When Phoebe’s sister-in-law asks her to return to Tribulation, Arizona to help run the H Double Bar Dude Ranch, she doesn’t hesitate. There’s competition from a new dude ranch this year, so the H Double Bar puts on a rodeo featuring a trick rider with a mysterious past. When accidents begin to happen around the ranch, Phoebe jumps in to figure out why, and confronts an unexpected foe. And a man from her own past forces her to confront feelings long buried. Dude or Die is the second book in the award-winning H Double Bar Dude Ranch series.
Buy Link:
This title is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.
Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/b5BVwp
AUTHOR BIO: DEBORAH SWIFT
Lynn Downey is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, historian of the West, and native Californian.
She was the Historian for Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco for 25 years. Her adventures as ambassador for company history took her around the world, where she spoke to television audiences, magazine editors, and university students, appeared in numerous documentaries, and on The Oprah Winfrey Show. She wrote many books and articles about the history of the company and the jeans, and her biography, Levi Strauss: The Man Who Gave Blue Jeans to the World, won the Foreword Reviews silver INDIE award.
Lynn got interested in dude ranches during her time at Levi’s. Her debut historical novel, Dudes Rush In, is set on an Arizona dude ranch in the 1950s; Arizona because she’s a desert rat at heart, and the 1950s because the clothes were fabulous.
Dudes Rush In won a Will Rogers Medallion Award, and placed first in Arizona Historical Fiction at the New Mexico-Arizona book awards. The next book in this series, Dude or Die, was released in 2023. And just for fun, Lynn wrote a screenplay based on Dudes Rush In, which is currently making the rounds of reviewers and competitions.
She pens short stories, as well. “The Wind and the Widow” took Honorable Mention in the History Through Fiction story contest, and “Incident at the Circle H” was a Finalist for the Longhorn Prize from Saddlebag Dispatches. The story “Goldie Hawn at the Good Karma Café,” won second place in The LAURA Short Fiction contest from Women Writing the West, and is based on her experiences in a San Francisco religious cult in the 1970s. (That will be another book one of these days.)
Lynn’s latest nonfiction book is American Dude Ranch: A Touch of the Cowboy and the Thrill of the West, a cultural history of the dude ranch. It was reviewed in The Wall Street Journal, True West, Cowgirl, and The Denver Post, and was a Finalist for the Next Generation INDIE Award in Nonfiction. Kirkus Reviews said the book is “…deeply engaging and balances accessible writing style with solid research.”
When she’s not writing, Lynn works as a consulting archivist and historian for museums, libraries, cultural institutions, and businesses. She is the past president of Women Writing the West, a member of the Western Writers of America, and is on numerous boards devoted to archives and historic preservation.
Lynn lives in Sonoma, California, where she sometimes makes wine from the Pinot Noir grapes in her back yard vineyard.
Author Links:
Website: https://www.lynndowney.com
Tumblereads blog: https://tumblereadsblog.com/blog-sg/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WriterLynnD
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lynndowney/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynn-downey-b82460249/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lynn.downey.historian/
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/westernhistorygal.bsky.social
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/WesternHistoryGal/
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Lynn-Downey/author/B001IXQ2N2
GUEST POST: DEBORAH SWIFT
My two historical novels, Dudes Rush In, and the new sequel, Dude or Die, are both set on a fictional Arizona dude ranch in the 1950s. Even my most recent work of history is about this topic, American Dude Ranch: A Touch of the Cowboy and the Thrill of the West.
I love the concept of the dude ranch: a place where you can go and live the cowboy life for a few days. This vacation destination began in the 1880s, and today you can do everything from helping the ranchers herd cattle, to getting a spa treatment in a room with views of cactus-studded mountains. Working as the company historian for Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco sparked my interest in dude ranching, because the company made clothing specifically for men and women to wear on ranches: the jeans and jackets, of course, but also gabardine riding pants, wildly patterned western shirts, and shiny satin rodeo shirts with embroidery on the yoke.
Most people who visited dude ranches – especially early in their history – came from the eastern states or even countries across the oceans. So, everything from riding a horse with a western saddle, to wearing clothing they never wore at home, meant a dude ranch vacation made memories guests couldn’t get anywhere else.
Dude ranches are an endless source of stories, including tales of the famous and infamous, who have also enjoyed going to ranches over the years. These include presidents and presidential family members (which seems appropriate for February, the month Americans celebrate President’s Day).
Theodore Roosevelt is at the top of this list. In 1883 he was a rising political star, as well as an author and a well-known outdoorsman. In that year he decided to head West to shoot a buffalo, and a friend recommended going to Medora, North Dakota, a tiny town on the Little Missouri River, where he would find abundant game. He was so taken with the area that he bought a place called the Chimney Butte Ranch, known locally as the Maltese Cross for the design of its cattle brand. He went back home to New York and managed the ranch from afar.
Also in the area were the Eaton brothers of Pittsburgh, who the year before had started up the very first dude ranch on their own cattle spread. Although they would move to Wyoming in 1903, they took in a lot of guests at their place near Medora.
In 1884, Theodore Roosevelt’s world collapsed: his mother and wife died on the same day. To deal with his grief, Roosevelt went West, where he hoped to heal. He arrived at his ranch in June and met the Eaton brothers, and also spent time with other ranchers in the area.
The locals liked him, but they branded him a “dude” for the way he dressed. In the 1880s, a “dude” was a man who was a little too fancy to be considered really masculine. Within just a couple of decades, as the dude ranch industry grew, the word would come to mean someone who came West from somewhere else, to spend time on a dude ranch.
Anyway, Roosevelt apparently loved wearing buckskins, and Howard Eaton – the driving force behind the first dude ranch – knew that was not very practical. He once said of Roosevelt, “Buckskin shirts were all right as long as they didn’t get wet, but when they got wet they’d shrink up. I never did like that buckskin hunting shirt he had but he wouldn’t have anything else.”
The future president kept his ranch until about 1887, and then he sold off his cattle interests. His Maltese Cross cabin is now part of Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.
But the Roosevelt dude ranch story doesn’t end there.
His oldest daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, inherited his love of the West, especially the Rocky Mountain region. In August of 1969 she arrived in Cody, Wyoming for her fourth dude ranch vacation. She was 85 years old, and stayed at the Sunlight Ranch, run by Faye and Don Snyder about 45 miles from Cody.
Faye Snyder said Alice was a real character, which is not a surprise. She was famous for some version of this line, “If you don’t have anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.”
One day during Alice’s time at the ranch, the Snyders’ daughter Sally answered the office phone. She then ran to her mother saying, “Mom, the president wants to talk to Mrs. Longworth, where is she?”
They tracked Alice down, and she took the call on the phone in the staff dining room. Faye Snyder heard her say, “Oh, hi Dick! How are you? What do you want?”
And who was Dick?
President Richard Nixon.
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