A Trailblazing Woman’s Journey Through the Rodeo Arena.

I’m excited to share my book review for Sunny Gale by Jamie Lisa Forbes. Thank you to Jamie Lisa Forbes for providing me with a reviewer copy of this book and to @Breakeven Books for including me on this tour.

Book Synopsis

It’s 1895- and fourteen-year-old Hannah Brandt is struggling with the hard life on a new Nebraska homestead. When her imagination is captured by a wild filly, she becomes obsessed with horses, which opens the door to her destiny. Just four years later, she enters
the first Cheyenne Frontier Day rodeo where she wins the relay race and her fate is sealed.

She gives herself a new name, Sunny Gale, and pursues a rodeo career, much to the disgust of her young husband and her very proper mother. Sunny defies convention with every move as the drive to compete takes over her life, leaving everything else behind, including husbands and children. It is a rough life she has chosen, but she craves the glory of the spotlight and refuses to bow to the expectations for a woman in her time.

Award winning author Jamie Lisa Forbes has once again brought us complex characters in a story based on real women and the early days when rodeo was wide open for them to become stars. It is a story of the social mores of the times and of a woman determined to defy them no matter how high the personal cost or where that choice might take her.

Book Review

Jamie Lisa Forbes’ Sunny Gale is a powerful, well-written historical novel that follows the journey of a progressive young woman. The book tells the story of Hannah Brandt, a homesteader who faces life challenges as her family moves from Ohio to Nebraska. Her life changes when she becomes captivated by a wild filly and starts a lifelong obsession with horses. It also sets her on a path to defy society-norms and to become a trailblazing figure in the rodeo world in the early 20th century.

By age eighteen, Hannah, now known as Sunny Gale, wins her first rodeo event at Cheyenne Frontier Days. This win marks the beginning of a career that would defy the expectations placed on women of her time. Sunny’s determination to live her dream life grows stronger as she begins winning races and bronc riding events. She takes her new name and leaves behind a conventional life of marriage and motherhood, fully embracing the non-traditional rodeo life.

Forbes excels at blending historical authenticity with a deeply personal story of ambition and sacrifice. Sunny’s relentless drive to compete, even at the cost of personal relationships, highlights the pressure placed on women to conform. Forbes also describes the high cost to women of that time for rejecting those expectations. The novel’s exploration of social norms of the early 1900s adds a poignant layer to Sunny’s journey. Her struggles, both in the rodeo ring and in her personal life, remind her how challenging it is for women to have a place in male-dominated spaces.

My Rating and Recommendation

Sunny Gale is an enjoyable, emotional novel portraying a woman who craves the freedom and recognition that only the rodeo spotlight can provide. Forbes’ skilled storytelling and historical detail make this a highly recommended read for historical fiction fans. Anyone who admires stories of women pushing the boundaries of their time will want this book on their shelf.

About the Author

Jamie Lisa Forbes was raised on a ranch in the Little Laramie Valley near Laramie, Wyoming. She attended the University of Colorado where she obtained degrees in English and philosophy. After fourteen months living in Israel, she returned to her family’s ranch where she lived for another fifteen years.

In 1994, she moved to Greensboro, North Carolina. In 2001, she graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Law and began her North Carolina law practice.

Forbes’ first novel, Unbroken, won the WILLA Literary Award for Contemporary Fiction in 2011. Her collection of short stories, The Widow Smalls and Other Stories, won the High Plains Book Awards for a short story collection in 2015.

Forbes’ novel of rural North Carolina in the segregation era, entitled Eden, was published in 2020. Her historical novel about women bronc riders in the early days of rodeo, entitled Sunny Gale, was published in May 2024 by Pronghorn Press.

Ms. Forbes continues to live—and write—in North Carolina.

Read the Kirkus starred review here

Listen to the author’s interview with Wyoming public radio here.

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Look for Sunny Gale on other tour stops:

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