Book Title: Dude or Die
Series: H Double Bar Dude Ranch series
Author: Lynn Downey
Publication Date: October 15, 2023
Publisher: Pronghorn Press
Page Length: 328
Genre: Historical Fiction
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Book Title and Author Name:
Dude or Die
by Lynn Downey
Blurb:
It’s 1954, and San Francisco writer Phoebe Kelley is enjoying the success of her first novel, Lady in the Desert. When Phoebe’s sister-in-law asks her to return to Tribulation, Arizona to help run the H Double Bar Dude Ranch, she doesn’t hesitate. There’s competition from a new dude ranch this year, so the H Double Bar puts on a rodeo featuring a trick rider with a mysterious past. When accidents begin to happen around the ranch, Phoebe jumps in to figure out why, and confronts an unexpected foe. And a man from her own past forces her to confront feelings long buried. Dude or Die is the second book in the award-winning H Double Bar Dude Ranch series.
Buy Link:
This title is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.
Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/b5BVwp
Guest post for When Angels Fly
Lynn Downey
Dude ranches have been my writing obsession for the last few years. My novels, Dudes Rush In and the new sequel, Dude or Die, are set on a fictional Arizona dude ranch in the 1950s. My last nonfiction book was a cultural history of these places, titled American Dude Ranch: A Touch of the Cowboy and the Thrill of the West.
Dude ranches began in the Rocky Mountain West in the 1880s. Men flocked to them from the eastern states to go hunting and live the cowboy life for a few weeks. By the time of World War I, families were also taking dude ranch vacations and they could find any kind of western experience they wanted throughout a variety of states, from Wyoming to Arizona.
I first got interested in dude ranches when I was working as the company historian for Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco. The firm made clothes just for people to wear on dude ranches, from the jeans and jackets to western-style shirts in wild fabrics, which most cowboys wouldn’t wear on a dare. But the dudes and dudines were there to have fun, and I had fun learning about this buckaroo getaway.
One interesting aspect of dude ranching’s history was how they first started showing up in books, as early as 1921. Caroline Lockhart, a reporter for newspapers and magazines at the beginning of the 20th century, went to Cody, Wyoming in 1904 and fell in love with the place. She heard about the concept of the dude ranch and began to write stories and articles. Then in 1921 she wrote the first full-length novel about dude ranches, called The Dude Wrangler.
More authors followed: Milton Krims published Dude Ranch in 1930, and Death on a Dude Ranch came out in 1939, written by Francis Bonnamy, which was the pseudonym for Audrey Boyers Walz. The book featured a detective named Peter Shane, who was the protagonist in her mystery series. Peter Kyne wrote one of my favorite books in this genre in 1940, Dude Woman.
Young adult authors soon got on the bandwagon, and the best of these dude ranch-themed books is Cherry Ames: Dude Ranch Nurse, published in 1953 by Julie Tatham.
Cherry Ames was the Nancy Drew of the nursing world, and was featured in a series of twenty-seven novels from the 1940s through the 1960s. Everywhere she goes to nurse someone back to health, she gets drawn into mystery and danger. In Dude Ranch Nurse she takes a job at the Twin Mounds Ranch near Tucson, Arizona. The dudes are a bit cranky, but Cherry is never ruffled, and she ends up helping the owner’s daughter find a lost fortune.
There are plenty of dude ranch details for readers, including the book’s cover, which shows Cherry in her pristine white nurse’s uniform, leaning on a corral, while a cowboy tries to tame a bucking bronc in the background. (She is also being eyed by one of the wranglers, which is something that happened frequently on dude ranches.)
Julie Tatham wrote under the name Julie Campbell for her Trixie Belden series of novels for teens. She also placed Trixie on a dude ranch in Trixie Belden and Mystery in Arizona, published in 1958. Trixie and her friends take a vacation at a dude ranch and when the staff mysteriously disappears, they have to take over the cooking and cleaning, and also solve a mystery, of course.
This is why I set my historical novels on a dude ranch. They are the perfect place for mystery, romance, and a touch of the cowboy.
Author Bio:
She was the Historian for Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco for 25 years. Her adventures as ambassador for company history took her around the world, where she spoke to television audiences, magazine editors, and university students, appeared in numerous documentaries, and on The Oprah Winfrey Show. She wrote many books and articles about the history of the company and the jeans, and her biography, Levi Strauss: The Man Who Gave Blue Jeans to the World, won the Foreword Reviews silver INDIE award.
Lynn got interested in dude ranches during her time at Levi’s. Her debut historical novel, Dudes Rush In, is set on an Arizona dude ranch in the 1950s; Arizona because she’s a desert rat at heart, and the 1950s because the clothes were fabulous.
Dudes Rush In won a Will Rogers Medallion Award, and placed first in Arizona Historical Fiction at the New Mexico-Arizona book awards. The next book in this series, Dude or Die, was released in 2023. And just for fun, Lynn wrote a screenplay based on Dudes Rush In, which is currently making the rounds of reviewers and competitions.
She pens short stories, as well. “The Wind and the Widow” took Honorable Mention in the History Through Fiction story contest, and “Incident at the Circle H” was a Finalist for the Longhorn Prize from Saddlebag Dispatches. The story “Goldie Hawn at the Good Karma Café,” won second place in The LAURA Short Fiction contest from Women Writing the West, and is based on her experiences in a San Francisco religious cult in the 1970s. (That will be another book one of these days.)
Lynn’s latest nonfiction book is American Dude Ranch: A Touch of the Cowboy and the Thrill of the West, a cultural history of the dude ranch. It was reviewed in The Wall Street Journal, True West, Cowgirl, and The Denver Post, and was a Finalist for the Next Generation INDIE Award in Nonfiction. Kirkus Reviews said the book is “…deeply engaging and balances accessible writing style with solid research.”
When she’s not writing, Lynn works as a consulting archivist and historian for museums, libraries, cultural institutions, and businesses. She is the past president of Women Writing the West, a member of the Western Writers of America, and is on numerous boards devoted to archives and historic preservation.
Lynn lives in Sonoma, California, where she sometimes makes wine from the Pinot Noir grapes in her back yard vineyard.
Author Links:
Website: https://www.lynndowney.com [My site is being redesigned and will be live in another week or so.]
Tumblereads blog: https://tumblereadsblog.com/blog-sg/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WriterLynnD
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lynndowney/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynn-downey-b82460249/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lynn.downey.historian/
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/westernhistorygal.bsky.social
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/WesternHistoryGal/
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Lynn-Downey/author/B001IXQ2N2
When Angels Fly 