Dee Marvine • P.O. Box 1143 • Big Timber, MT 59011 • 406-932-5710 • dmarvine@bresnan.net
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This book depicts an era of the American West when capturing renegade horses from the hills above the homestead served as training ground for extraordinary horsemanship. It tells the story of the outstanding girl who out rode all others at stampedes and roundups, long before these contests of skill and stamina on a bucking horse came to be known as rodeo. After winning the title Lady Bucking Horse Champion of the World at the first Calgary Stampede in 1912, she married a cowboy promoter and they formed their own Wild West show, featuring Fannie as bronc rider and sharpshooter, even riding in far off New York City and in Chicago with Buffalo Bill Cody’s western extravaganza. Later they purchased a dude ranch and Fannie became the first woman licensed by the state of Montana to guide hunters into the Bob Marshall Wilderness. This is the story of a remarkable girl and the woman she became, her spirit undaunted throughout a life marked with courage and adventure, triumph and heartache. Though dramatized to convey the full import of her unique life, the story is true as Fannie lived it. Except for a few minor characters, the fictionalizing of scenes, and story devices added for continuity, the people, places, rodeo events, dates, and diary excerpts are real.
Winner of a 2006 WILLA Literary Award (Biography/Memoir category), a national
competition named for Willa Cather and sponsored by Women Writing the West.
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The sleepy desert village of Los Angeles suddenly awakens in March 1886, when a railroad fare war reduces the price of a one-way ticket to just one dollar. Claire Chadwick, single 34-year-old mother of 15-year-old Joanna, seizes the opportunity provided by the low fare to change her drab life and joins others on an immigrant train that carries them west. During their journey, she is attracted to an ambitious young adventurer Randy Plank, but her daughter, too, is smitten with Randy, and their lives unfold with the land boom that within two years brings 200,000 people to the burgeoning town. But the inevitable bust follows the irrational boom. Unable to make a go of it, 150,000 leave the area, while 50,000 determined immigrants remain to build the city. Claire, with pluck and luck, manages to survive the bust, along with young bank manager Harry Graham, who also falls in love with her, McKenzie Tate, real estate tycoon, and dynamic Farley Dodd, her employer who is running for mayor. At this critical point, Claire must choose between a safe marriage and her determination to retain her independence.
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When spunky Swedish spinster Lili Tornquist, age 29, learns that her widowed father will soon remarry a woman she detests, she leaves her Minnesota home to become the mail-order bride of a distant cousin, Gunnar Jorgeson, a Montana sheep rancher. But her new husband falls far short of his promise, and putting aside all she has previously believed about steadfastness and endurance, Lili abandons her marriage to make her own way in the notorious wide-open mining town of Butte. In desperation, unable to find more suitable work, she revives a long-dormant talent and takes a job singing in a hurdy-gurdy house, much to the consternation of two men who love her—mine lawyer Charles Weatherby and union organizer Tom Hawes. Lili feels loyalty to each of them and her integrity is severely tested. After suffering near disgrace, a mine disaster, and a crisis in the integrity of her chosen career, Lili comes to terms with her fear of another disastrous commitment and her desire to belong somewhere—to someone.
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The Missouri River is no place for a pretty woman to be traveling on her own, but Mattie Hamil is on a frantic search for her fiancé Cal Bodein, a gambler by choice and charmer by nature. Mattie gave more than her heart to him that last evening back in St. Louis, and though they plan to marry when he returns from seeking his fortune upriver, she cannot wait.
Her pregnancy changes everything; now she must find him before her secret is known and she loses her job. Mattie finds a protector in the river-wise and widowed steamboat captain Garnet Tanner, who doesn’t hide his disapproval of her missing fiancé when he finally turns up. But Cal and Mattie love each other. They marry in the post-gold rush town of Last Chance Gulch (soon to become Helena, capital of the territory). However, married life does not run smoothly. The most powerful men in town are out to ruin Cal. In fact, nothing turns out the way Mattie planned, and she needs all the nerve she can muster to keep her going through the trials that lie ahead.Last Chance (hardcover, Doubleday Availability
The Lady Rode Bucking Horses is available in softcover in major bookstores and on Amazon.com. All Aboard for Paradise is available in hardcover on Amazon.com. Out-of-print Sweet Grass (hardcover and audio cassette) and Last Chance (hardcover, paperback, audio cassettes and CDs) can be ordered “used” on Amazon.com. New autographed copies of all books can be ordered from the author. E-mail dmarvine@bresnan.net or phone 406-932-5710. Or mail your request to: Dee Marvine, P. O. Box 1143, Big Timber, MT 59011. Please make out your check to Dee Marvine, and add $3.00 postage to the price of each book.
Bio
Author Dee Marvine was born Deloise Hall on a Nebraska farm near Lyons and raised near Tekamah. She began writing as a child but did not distinguish this interest from a variety of other creative outlets she pursued while growing up with an older brother and younger sister in the isolation of the countryside. Her father didn’t approve of girls “hanging around” the animals or barnyard, so after her daily household chores she spent her time drawing, sewing, singing, listening to the radio, reading, playing dress-up or “movie star,” and bossing her little sister. She moved with her family to Omaha as a high-school junior, where she met her future husband, artist Don Marvine. They married soon after graduation and Dee worked for five years in secretarial jobs in Los Angeles while Don attended art school. She then spent five more years as a suburban mother of two preschoolers while Don established his graphic-design business in Chicago.
When her youngest child reached school age, Dee entered Elmhurst College and after graduating with honors in English realized she had found her calling—working with words. She spent fifteen years as a professional writer and editor for corporate and magazine clients in Chicago before moving with her husband to Montana so she could devote full time to writing, and Don could pursue fine art. Dee also works as a freelance editor and conducts editing workshops for writers. She is a member of Western Writers of America and Women Writing the West.
She and Don founded The Big Timber Jazz Society, producing several concerts each year that bring top jazz performers from Montana and the surrounding area to the little town of Big Timber. In addition, they enjoy reading, playing bridge, and visits with their children and grandchildren in Baltimore and Chicago.