Customer Reviews

The Secret Life of Cowboys

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is an amazingly honest and forthright autobiography of a man who started life as a midwestern suburbanite and who found his way to the Wild West and learned to ranch in the harsh environment of Eastern Montana. After spending years working as a hand with horses and cattle, and after owning and working his own ranch, Tom Groneberg still does not believe himself to be a true cowboy. But to me, he and his wife, Jen, are true American pioneers. To those of us with the desire but without the guts to make a life in the romantic but difficult world of cowboys, he is a mythical figure. To those of us who want to take the hard road, he is an excellent example. I wholeheartedly recommend this book.

If this book were fictional Tom Groneberg would be a engaging, complicated protaganist. One doesn't know his motivations at all times but as a reader you believe in his journey, pray for his good fortune and embrace his love for the rugged country most of us have yet to experience. I was most taken with Mr. Groenberg's abilty to be very critical of his chosen path and yet still make the reader hopeful that he continues in his cowboy life. If you ever saw a wide open space and wished to be surrounded by it, catch a glimpse in this book.

I respect and admire Groneberg's tenacity and will to become part of the West and to write this book. The book takes us through Tom Groneberg's experiences as a horse trail guide, ranch hand, and ranch manager. Gone are the perfectly dirtied cowboy hats that today's country "musicians" wear...Groneberg learns that life in the West is hard, cold, and unforgiving.

Groneberg wants so desperately to be a part of this culture, but he never fully explains why. Perhaps this is part of the mystery of this region, the allure. This book reminds me of a modern-day My Antonia in parts--especially his descriptions of the harsh winters he and his wife endure in Montana.

What I come away with after reading this memoir is that it's difficult to be a man today--especially when you're a man drawn to a hard life. Ranching is not as simple and pastoral as it seems. Growing up on a farm allowed me to empathize with Groneberg in parts and allowed me to predict outcomes in others. I would encourage those who haven't had much experience with the "cowboy way" to read this memoir and leave the country music videos on mute. Groneberg paints a realistic picture of what the life of a cowboy is like in the modern age.

Armed with not much more than an English degree, Groneberg responds to an ad in, of all places, the literary Utne Reader, for someone to work on a horse ranch in Colorado. Before you can say "giddyap," he's working toward another degree in horses in Montana.
There's a girl involved, of course, and you somehow suspect they'll ride happily off into the Western sunset together. But things take a darker turn...
Beautiful writing; the effects of Groneberg's English degree show up in the beautiful and poetic language of this surprising and very good book.

This book did not make me want to ride a bucking bronco; it did not make me want to brand cattle or deliver a prolapsed calf; it did not make me want to move somewhere where the temperature is 40 below in the winter and 100 above in the summer. It did, however, make me want to keep reading. Tom Groneberg is a fine writer and his book is a great find for those readers, like me, who vicariously enjoy the adventures of more adventurous souls from the safety of our armchairs.

This book was a wonderful read. This guys has lived the life I desire and I wish I could have had his experiences. From working and learning on the dude ranch, to the physical and emotional callouses he developed raising his own cattle, Tom's got to be given credit for chasing his dream. Even if it didn't turn out the way he had thought, he will die without the thought of "what if." I wouldn't quite call this a manual, per se, but, I might call this a historical account. It is good reinforcement to the old addage, "be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it."

If you are looking for an easy read about life on the range and a young mans desire to chase his dream, you should pick this book up. You will be none to worse if you do.

I found this book very difficult to finish. It was hard to feel sympathy for the author when everytime he and his girlfriend/wife were in a bind, they'd get money from his parents. Small loans are one thing, but having your father buy you an entire ranch! Boo-hoo, life is hard...

This is a great title for maybe a different book. Expecting to find some salty insight into the hearts and minds of cowboys, the men who live and work as agricultural laborers in the modern West, I found instead the memoir of a young man from Chicago, still in his 30s, who falls in love with wide open spaces and tries to live out a dream of working with cattle and being a rancher. The problem is that he is almost totally unprepared for the arduous task of running a ranch and lacks the seasoned philosophy of a man who has experienced lean years, loss, and failure. Taking on a 15-square-mile ranch outside Miles City, Montana, he is quickly in over his head and in a matter of time is surviving on anti-depressants.

Hard winters, hard luck, and lack of experience combine to turn his dream into heartbreak. I seldom read a book that makes me tear up, but this one did, about page 220 when on a September day, he watches as his neighbors gather to buy at auction his machinery and equipment. Any reader used to the unforgiving seasons of the plains, especially in Montana, might remain dried-eyed at Groneberg's foolhardy and romantic expectations of ranching, but to know him for the tender, ingenuous soul that he seems to be in his book, it's hard to see his failure as anything but the unhappy end of a big-hearted dream.

The secret in the secret life of cowboys remains something of an elusive mystery for Groneberg. Along with him, we observe cowboys from the outside, a fraternity of men engaged in hard, physical labor, masters of skills learned from boyhood, able to do their jobs in severe working conditions, and possessors of a kind of grace beyond words to describe. Groneberg's book is an attempt over and over to capture this grace in words, always falling a little short, while making ever more vivid the extent of his admiration. He even takes a class in saddle bronc riding in hopes of breaking through this barrier and feeling at least for a moment like a cowboy.

In anyone else's hands, this might all seem over the top, but his love of cowboys comes from a heart that is pure as a boy's, and it is easy to allow him his earnest wish to become and be accepted as a man of their perceived character - honest, true, fearless, tough, physically agile, and ethically uncompromised. At the end of the book, he has not yet forgiven himself for being less than all that, but he has found a place for himself as a hand on another smaller ranch, chastened by his experiences toward a kind of self-respect and most importantly loving the life he has found for himself, his wife, and young son.

I'm happy to recommend this book to anyone with an interest in ranching, the modern West, Montana, rites of passage, and soulful memoirs. Along similar lines, I'd recommend the personal stories of some other youthful writers from the West: C. L. Rawlins' "Broken Country," Mark Spragg's "Where Rivers Change Direction," Pete Fromm's "Indian Creek Chronicles," and Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire."

This book had great potential and, judging by the ratings of other posters, is a good read overall. But I couldn't finish it. I know these are facts of life, but I was disturbed to read about the suffocation of the calf and the killing of the deer. Both scenes were too graphic for me.

Many of us imagine taking up a different life and perhaps due to responsibilities and economics we cannot take the plunge into a totally different lifestyle. But due to his youth and commitment, author Groneberg fulfills his desire to be a cowboy and he starts to work on ranches, first starting with dude ranches working himself up, with the aid of his parents, to owning a ranch so large in eastern Montana that it is beyond any easterners imagination that someone could own so much land yet not be considered a large ranch owner among his peers. Groneberg starts initially without the woman who will soon be his wife who he leaves behind when he starts his cowboy venture but she will soon join him as they first live in north eastern Montana at times living in a primitive cabin facing a lake up scaling it to modern plumbing and basic electricity. Groneberg describes the responsibilities of being a cowboy and with appreciative descriptions of their lifestyle including the bronc busters who ride professionally with skill and modest rewards. The cowboys are described as earnest, modest and helpful people who often offer Groneberg a hand such as redoing his bronc saddle to keep him from being killed when he enters a rodeo with very little experience. In the second half of the book Groneberg buys a ranch in the more arid eastern part of Montana where it takes a lot more acreage to support a herd of cattle thus the need for lots of land. The responsibilities of ranch life are overwhelming for someone with limited cattle and history, as Groneberg becomes a ranch manger, which requires him to be a vet, a plumber, a mechanic, an accountant and a ranch hand. The life and death struggle of the animals that either do not breed as rapidly as needed or prematurely die due to the weather or other complications takes its toll as Groneberg has to make an adult decision about what to do with his life and still enjoy the outdoor life with less responsibility. Excellent descriptions of all the people along the way and after reading this book you'll know how hard life can be on a ranch and for cowboys. It's also funny in parts as you can appreciate why cowboys don't want "dudes" to dismount any more than they have to on a trail rides along with the many codes of the west such as "Never criticize another man's dog".