Cowboy
by Sara Davidson

List Price: $13.00
Pages: 288
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0060931353
Publisher: HarperCollins

Sara and Zack are wrong for each other in every way. A divorced mother of two, Sara is an author and television producer. Zack is a cowboy who barely finished high school and lives in a trailer in the Arizona desert. His greatest ambition is to make the best rawhide bridles in the West. But when a weekend fling turns into something more, it challenges every aspect of Sara's being: her relationship with her kids, work, social life, and most importantly, her understanding of the link between body and soul.

How can Sara reconcile the differences, both social and economic, between herself and Zack in order to embrace the love that becomes undeniable? Devoted to his art, Zack often finds himself strapped for cash, leaving Sara in the uncomfortable position of supporting him. Needless to say, this raises more than a few eyebrows among her family and friends. After all, what does it look like to the world that she is paying for a man 10 years her junior, a man with magic hands and an open soul that warm her like no other. More importantly, how can she explain this to herself?

In Cowboy, bestselling author Sara Davidson takes an unflinchingly honest look at the very real issues that women must face today as they search for love: the sacrifices, the risks, and the criticism they must bear for dating men who are not society's idea of Mr. Right.

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1. Have you ever met someone at a party, a bar, or a meeting, felt a spark of interest and turned away? Why did you walk away? Did you regret it?

2. What made Sara receptive to Zack? If they'd met when they were younger, what might have happened?

3. Why do you think the children reacted so violently to Zack's continued presence?

4. What does Cowboy suggest about contemporary parenting?

5. Do you think it's possible to have great sex without love? Why is the physical relationship in Cowboy so important?

6. How did Sara expand and challenge Zack's views?

7. What did Zack offer Sara that she'd never experienced?

8. Whose needs come first: your children's? Your partner's? Your own? Does Sara rearrange her priorities through the course of the story?

9. What aspect of this relationship seems to represent the greatest hurdle: Money? Cultural difference? Class barriers? Conflict with the children? Which would you find most difficult to overcome?

10. How do the events in Sara's life affect her writing on the TV show? Does art imitate life or is life imitating art?

11. What do you see as the prospects for this relationship in the future?

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"Cowboy is a fascinating, intricate, complex love story that cuts across class lines, defying social expectations. Davidson's relationship with Zack is full of complications and negotiations, terrible and wonderful. If we accept that love is a mystery, this mystery holds you until the last page and beyond. "

—Whitney Otto, author of How

to Make an American Quilt

" Sara Davidson's Cowboy is a true grit love story for our time, told with style and honesty by a master prose stylist. Inspiring without sentimental, Cowboy will give you the best ride of the year. "

—Dan Wakefield, author of Going

All the Way and Returning: A Spirtual Journey

" Novel or memoir? Who cares! Sara Davidson has created a love story so intensely intimate and so sexually compelling that every woman who reads it will be tempted to go right out and hunt down her very own cowboy. This is a book that makes you believe again in strange twist and turns of real love. "

—Linda Gray Sexton, author of Searching

for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton

" I started reading this marvelous book and was unable to do anything else till I got to the final sentence. Sara Davidson, it's all your fault! "

—Hendrik Hertzberg, Senior Editor,

The New Yorker

" Every girl needs a cowboy. Especially if she is over forty seven and thinks her days of passion are fading fast. Sara Davidson's compelling, funny, deeply felt book that carries an important warning: If you don't accept the love that comes your way, if you blink rather than seeing it for what it is, chances are you'll miss the great love of your life. Every girl can't have a cowboy, but she can have this book and she'd better. "

—Barbara Lazear Ascher, author of Dancing

in the Dark

" The incredible story of love far outside the comfort zone "

—Teresa Jordan, author of Riding

The White Horse Home

" What does a woman want? Rodeo and Juliet. "

—Maureen Dowd, New York Times

" The incredible story of love far outside the comfort zone "

—Teresa Jordan, author of Riding

The White Horse Home

" The premise? That love humbles us in wonderful, unexpected ways, that if we believe in that mysterious wind that blows our lives, like tumbling tumbleweeds, into new shapes, we must ride blind with it. "

—Carol Muske Dukes, Washington

Post

" A compelling, unorthodox account of bow one woman achieved a blend of commitment and freedom. "

—Chicago Tribune

" Davidson executes [cowboy] with intelligence, candor and humor .... Her shot is true. "

—People