Product Description

Dickie Sinfield was seven years old when her father uprooted the family from their comfortable suburban home and moved them to a small, run-down ranch in Clayton, Utah, where he could chase his dream of  being a cowboy. Dickie always hated the cattle-ranching lifestyle, and as soon as she turned eighteen she fled for the comforts of the city.

Now a grown woman, a respected journalist in Salt Lake City, Dickie is coming home following the tragic, accidental death of her brother. Suddenly back in the farmhouse she was once so desperate to abandon—emotionally exposed by, yet reluctantly drawn to the vast, desolate landscape and the solitude it offers—she must confront her family's past . . . and the horrifying discovery at the pivotal moment of her childhood that ultimately forced her to run from the desert.

Spanning two generations and vast landscapes, a novel that fans of Pam Houston and Barbara Kingsolver will eagerly embrace, Jana Richman's The Last Cowgirl will strike a powerful chord with anyone who has ever searched for solace in the space around them.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1177551 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-01
• Released on: 2008-01-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Richman's first novel offers a curious and satisfying blend of longing, political criticism and a middle-aged woman's sudden realization that she has been pretending all her life. Dickie Sinfield, 52, spent her childhood on a hardscrabble Utah cattle ranch, after her father uprooted her and her siblings from the suburbs and forced her to become a cowgirl at age seven. Fleeing at 18, Dickie never married and has been a Salt Lake City newspaper reporter for 25 years, all the while denying her love for her family and for childhood neighbor boy Stumpy Nelson. When Dickie's brother, Heber, is killed by poison gas in an accident at the U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Grounds, Dickie comes home for the funeral. There, she face her father's anger and bitterness, her mother's infidelity, her best friend's betrayal—and her own life. Amid Dickie's personal angst and gradual self-discovery, Richman unloads heaping criticism on the federal government's handling of chemical weapons and its treatment of civilian accident victims. Author of the memoir Riding in the Shadows of Saints: A Woman's Story of Motorcycling the Mormon Trail, Richman delivers a warm story of good folks who make bad decisions, justify them and then have to live with the consequences. (Jan.)
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Review
" Engrossing. The narrative touches on complexities and contradictions that touch so many lives: steadfast patriotism vs. threatening governmental action; urban Mormonism vs. its earthier rural equivalent; and people vs. a past that can leave them with heavy baggage. With lovely specificity, Richman manages to tell a true Utah story." (Salt Lake City Weekly, 2008 ARTYS Awards (Winner, Best Fiction Book) )

"A warm story of good folks who make bad decisions and then have to live with them." (Publishers Weekly )

"A warm story of good folks who make bad decisions and then have to live with them." -- Publishers Weekly

"Readers will be irrevocably drawn into this top-notch fictional debut from an amazing new talent." (Booklist )

"Readers will be irrevocably drawn into this top-notch fictional debut from an amazing new talent." -- Booklist

"Rich characterizations and vivid sense of place. One of the year's finest works of local fiction." (Salt Lake City Weekly )

"Rich characterizations and vivid sense of place. One of the year’s finest works of local fiction." -- Salt Lake City Weekly

"Richman's mastery of the emotional geography is illuminating and call(s) to mind the work of Pat Conroy." (Kirkus Reviews )

"Richman’s mastery of the emotional geography is illuminating and call(s) to mind the work of Pat Conroy." -- Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Jana Richman lives in Salt Lake City with her husband, Steve Defa. She is the author of the memoir, Riding in the Shadows of Saints: A Woman's Story of Motorcycling the Mormon Trail. She invites readers to e-mail her at lastcowgirl@comcast.net.

Customer Reviews

A novel that reads like a memoir
I recently reviewed two memoirs, mentioning that they read like novels. Now I have found a novel that felt like a memoir. In The Last Cowgirl: A Novel, Jana Richman has brought her main character, Dickie Sinfield to life through a combination of contemporary narrative and flashbacks to childhood memories. The Last Cowgirl is a book about a woman coming to terms with her childhood on a cattle ranch, and her life in the 30 years since she left it.

When she was 7 years old, Dickie's father George moved the family from a suburb of Salt Lake City to a ranch in the rural town of Clayton, complete with cows and horses. Dickie tells us at the beginning of the novel:

Since then - nearly forty-six years ago - I've blamed anything that needed blaming on what Annie refers to it as Dad's "Gil Favor complex."

Dickie's older brother Heber thrived, loving the change, while older sister Annie and mother Ruth ignored the move, continuing to be fashionable and ladylike. Dickie was stuck in the middle, and ended up torn between the two extremes. While she would say that she hated life in Clayton, she loved riding in the wilderness with her new friend Stumpy and helping their neighbor, Bev, with her garden and ranch. Dickie was a sensitive child who had thrived on orderliness of the green grass, sidewalks, and curbs, and felt out of her element in the relative wilderness of Clayton. Dickie's character comes across well in this quote about her unsettled feelings during childhood:

It was the last three words that got to me. The three words I'd been hearing my entire life. Dropped off a horse onto her head. She'll be fine. Dragged by a steer. She'll be fine. Lost in the mountains. She'll be fine. Branded. She'll be fine. Shot at. She'll be fine. At what point, I wondered, do the actions of grown-ups add up to a child who actually won't be fine?

Dickie leaves Clayton right after graduation with a college scholarship for a journalism program, then leads a very orderly life in Salt Lake City as a prominent writer for a Mormon newspaper. She has a house, a yard with a garden, a couple friends, and a neighbor who she has been casually dating for over 10 years. Dickie's orderly life is reminiscent of her suburban life prior to the move to Clayton. She has also tried to leave behind any emotional messiness; we are left only with hints about a past relationship. Dickie's liberal beliefs set her apart from most of the people at work and help her keep her distance from others, making her life very compartmentalized. The Last Cowgirl challenges its narrator to let go of her control, and brings the reader along for the wonderful ride, galloping beside her.

Using Dickie's voice to tell the story, Richman makes The Last Cowgirl very personal. As we read her memories from childhood, we build a strong connection with her. Dickie's friends, family, and neighbors become like friends to us as we see them from her childhood through her adulthood. Richman writes very detailed descriptions, and while I've never been to Utah, I can now picture the landscape around the ranch in great detail; Richman has painted vivid images that have stayed in my mind long after I closed the book. My mind's eye is stuck on a hidden canyon with wild horses...

I'm glad I took The Last Cowgirl off my shelf on a day when my daughters weren't home, because nothing could make me put it down! As it was, I ignored my husband, dogs, and computer while I was caught in the world Richman spun around Dickie Sinfield. The Last Cowgirl had me laughing, crying, and reading quotes out loud, completely enraptured by the story. Make sure you've got some free time when you pick it up, you won't be able to put it down.

I strongly recommend reading The Last Cowgirl, not only so you can read about Dickie's unique childhood escapades, but also to read her journey from keeping everyone at arm's length to trying to achieve happiness. As you follow your own trail, spend a few hours reading The Last Cowgirl to help bring you some smiles along the way.

Great read - doesn't disappoint
I ordered this book by author Jana Richman, having so thoroughly enjoyed her non-fiction work Riding in the Shadows of Saints: A Woman's Story of Motorcycling the Mormon Trail. I was hoping for more of her thoughtful insights into the Mormon culture in particular and human nature in general and 'The Last Cowgirl' did not disappoint.

With a light and compelling style and clear prose, Richman weaves a tale loosely based on her own experiences growing up in rural Utah to fulfill her father's life-long dream to live the American cowboy life before it was lost forever. The story is a short epic, covering as it does the lives of its main characters over a span of 40 years or so. Along the way, the reader learns more about the uniquely Mormon culture, the difficult but sometimes fulfilling life of the small rancher in the American West, and the US Army's secretive and flawed chemical weapons testing program in the desert west of Salt Lake City in the '60's.

The characters themselves are endearing, approachable and well developed for such a compact work, and I found myself wanting to jump in the car and drive out to that rugged valley where the story plays out in the hopes of running into one or more them - they are that appealing and believable.

As with her earlier work, Ms Richman has written a book that is entertaining, informative and thought-provoking. I look forward to more from this talented writer.

Humorous, Sarcastic, Honest
This novel really does read like a memoir as another person has already stated. It is a memoir of growing up on a ranch in 1960s Utah. Yes, it is a Mormon family or "jack Mormon", however you wish to call it, but the religion plays a very small role in the novel. Bascially, when it comes to Utah, you can't have one without the other. The Mormonism in this novel is very tastefully mentioned here and there and the author never portrays the religion as saintly or without its flaws. I was surprised and very pleased to find that the author never "preaches" and comes across as honest and even sometimes sarcastic regarding religion. Most of the novel is about ranch life and cows and the Army doing illegal testing with nerve gas. The story opens with Dickie dealing with her brother's death and within the course of a month, she loses her boyfriend and her job while readers get an in depth look at her childhood and her life as a cowgirl. There is a moral or two in this story. "Get over it" would be one moral. Dickie realizes at the age of 52 that the grudge and hate she has been carrying around over 40 years of her life has prevented her from truly living it. The second moral: It is never too late to let someone in your heart and maybe fall in love.