With gritty tough-guy prose and an unerring eye for details that capture the guts and frailty of the human condition, Phillips has crafted an enthralling tale of the modern bulldogging cowboy. A reporter for the Modesto
(Calif.) Bee
, Phillips spent a year on the road with "one loose-knit band of cowboys, mostly steer wrestlers" during the 2004 Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association season. From the dusty arenas of Norco, Calif., and Cody, Wyo., to the glitzy, sexed-up Strip in Las Vegas, Phillips centers this rip-snorting yarn on Luke Branquino, a tobacco-chewing, womanizing up-and-comer from California, and Travis Cadwell, an old-timer trying to find the glory one last time. In Phillips's powerful language, Branquino is big in body and character, and on the endless rodeo circuit he drinks, wrestles thousand-pound steers to the ground and makes it with the ladies with equal abandon. In the harsh reality of the arena, the aging Cadwell "felt like he was embarrassing himself... a new and entirely ugly feeling." This is a raunchy, insightful delight. 16 pages b&w photos not seen by PW
. (Nov.)
