Bear

“Ambition,” Marcus Aurelius wrote, “means tying your well-being to what other people say or do . . . Sanity means tying it to your own actions.”

Barbie is an interviewer/journalist for Real Rodeo TV. She travels to all the televised rodeos and she interviews the cowboys and other participants during the events. Given an opportunity to do in-depth interviews with rodeo stars, she jumps at the chance looking to make her mark on the world. Her first interview is with bareback rodeo champion, Montana Bear Claw, a Nez Perce Native American who is low-key, charming and private. He flirts with her on-camera and it flusters and flatters her all at the same time.

As they get to know each other, a situation develops which throws them together in a more urgent way: who is murdering rodeo clowns? Working as a team, Barbie and Montana need to figure out this mystery and stop the killings as quickly as possible.

In the meantime, Montana’s parents are dead set against him having an Anglo girlfriend. Can Barbie and Montana find the killer and stop him or her? How will their relationship grow or fall apart under the strain of her ambition, his need for privacy, and his parents’ pressure to conform?

Read an excerpt.

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