Her Prairie Knight: Westerns romance
B. M. Bower
Paperback
(Independently published, Oct. 28, 2019)
When Eastern society girl Beatrice “Trix” Lansell arrives in Montana for a visit with her brother, she is swept off her feet by the majestic, rugged beauty of the land, by the simplicity and satisfaction of ranch life, and by a handsome cowboy named Keith Cameron. But Keith seems to be immune to Trix’s charms, and as a woman used to having young men eating out of the palm of her hand, Trix is a bit put out.As a beautiful prairie summer stretches out before her, Trix is determined to experience everything life on the range has to offer. Amidst a glorious season of hard work and play, Trix finds herself falling in love with the land . . . and with Keith Cameron. Piqued by her growing attraction to him and his continued indifference, and despite the disapproval of her mother and a would-be suitor, Trix becomes determined to make Keith fall in love with her and teach him a lesson about women in the process. But Keith has plans of his own—to teach Trix a lesson about life, and what it really means to love someone . . .Written in 1906, Her Prairie Knight was one of the first novels by B.M. Bower, the first woman to find success as a western writer. Bower drew from her own experiences as a homesteader in Montana to craft this smart and sweet love story, set against a beautiful untamed landscape rife with dangers and hardship, but also filled with pride and determination, laughter and song, and of course, true love..........Bertha Muzzy Sinclair or Sinclair-Cowan, née Muzzy (November 15, 1871 – July 23, 1940), best known by her pseudonym B. M. Bower, was an American author who wrote novels, fictional short stories, and screenplays about the American Old West. Her works, featuring cowboys and cows of the Flying U Ranch in Montana, reflected "an interest in ranch life, the use of working cowboys as main characters (even in romantic plots), the occasional appearance of eastern types for the sake of contrast, a sense of western geography as simultaneously harsh and grand, and a good deal of factual attention to such matters as cattle branding and bronc busting." She was married three times: to Clayton Bower in 1890, to Bertrand William Sinclair (also a Western author) in 1905, and to Robert Elsworth Cowan in 1921. However, she chose to publish under the name Bower.BiographyEarly lifeBorn Bertha Muzzy in Otter Tail County, Minnesota, to Washington Muzzy and Eunice Miner Muzzy, Bower moved with her family to a dryland homestead near Great Falls, Montana, in 1889. That fall, just before her eighteenth birthday, she began teaching school in nearby Milligan Valley. The school was a small, hastily converted log outbuilding, and she taught twelve pupils. Her experiences as a teacher informed the characters of schoolma'ams who appear frequently in her in the writings, notably in The North Wind Do Blow (1937), in which a young, eastern-born schoolma'am teaches her first term in central Montana. After one term as a schoolteacher, Bower returned to her family's homestead.