Riding the Edge of an Era: Growing Up Cowboy on the Outlaw Trail

Riding the Edge of an Era: Growing Up Cowboy on the Outlaw Trail

By 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.

• • 978-0-931271-85-4 • 254 pp • Trade paper • $17.95  ORDER NOW

Riding the Edge of an Era: Growing Up Cowboy on the Outlaw Trail

By Diana Allen Kouris

“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

"Riding the Edge of an Era: Growing up Cowboy on the Outlaw Trail is an extraordinary story written by a woman steeped in a western ranching environment."
••Mary E. Trimble

 

Diana Allen Kouris

Diana Allen Kouris was raised on the historic Brown’s Park Livestock Ranch in the “three corners” country of Utah, Colorada, and Wyoming. Surrounded with beautiful mountains and a lingering essence of the Old West, Diana thrived in the embrace of her family and cattle ranching heritage.

Diana is also the author of the nonfiction book The Romantic and Notorious History of Brown’s Park, which is a regional bestseller. Her work also appears in periodicals and an anthology. She lives with her husband, Mike, in the central part of Wyoming near Kinnear.

She conducts workshops on writing and history and leads an occasional tour of the Brown’s Park area.

She is working on new book projects inolving women and western history.