Riding the Edge of an Era: Growing Up Cowboy on the Outlaw Trail
Diana Allen Kouris
“On
this range we called home, old-time cowboys worked cattle on snaky broncs,
and the stories and signs left behind by Native Americans and outlaws
were still fresh. Without telephones or electricity, we depended one
each other and read at night by the candle-like light of coal oil lamps.
Tightly woven into the cowboy life, Nonie, Bobby, and I thrived within
a loving family and within the bond we shared with each other and this
beautiful place.”
In this elegant and illuminating true story, Diana Allen Kouris tells of growing up on the historic Brown’s Park Livestock Ranch, where in the 1800s Butch Cassidy found sanctuary, and nearly a century later her family hosted Robert Redford as he retraced the Outlaw Trail.
There, in a remote Green River valley near the “three corners” of Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah, time had slowed, allowing Diana to thrive within the Old West cattle ranching legacy begun by her grandparents.
Hers was a magical childhood spent in the midst of a loving family, including sidekick siblings Nonie and Bobby. Adventure was as close as the horse corrals, for with their cow horses, Bollie, Chocko, and Smokey, the threesome spent hours on horseback learning theland, cowboy skills, responsibility, and self-reliance.
Kouris captures a human spirit as vital as the land as she tells of her mother crawling across the swinging bridge in a storm to bring the family home, her brother attaining “perfect freedom” as he ran wild horses, and her family moving cattle in relentless weather. She describes tragedy met and overcome while living the magnificent, sometimes achingly hard, cowboy way of life.
Ironically, it is the land’s uniqueness and beauty that brings lasting change for the three siblings as they try to hold on to each other and to a vanishing era. But because she rode on the edge of a fleeting era and brings it vigorously to life, it remains in her heart—and in ours.
“Riding the Edge of an Era is one of
the most heartwarming and captivating books I have ever read. Diana Allen
Kouris is a masterful storyteller with a wonderful story to tell. This
book should be required reading for all new arrivals in the West, so
they might know something about the folks this land has shaped, about
the folks who have long called this land their home.”
•• D.L. Birchfield, author of Field of Honor and Black Silk Handkerchief
“Diana Kouris grew up in a tough family, pioneers in a remote valley
touching Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. Her account of family life along
the Green River is as comfortable as a family album, with photographs leading
the reader through the stories, showing the high expectations and love
that created responsible adults. The people, livestock, and land depended
on one another, trusted one another, and reinforced one another.”
••Linda M. Hasselstrom, author of Between Grass and Sky and other
Western nonfiction
• 978-0-931271-85-4 • Trade paper • $17.95 Order Now!