The Last Cowboys: A Pioneer Family in the New West

Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Branch (Boy on Ice) develops his 2015 New York Times article on a successful rodeo family into a full-blown tale of modern life on the range in southern Utah. The book focuses on the Wrights, a family of cattle ranchers and world champion saddle-bronc riders, as they struggle to hang on to land that's been in their family for more than 150 years. It's also the place where Bill Wrights and his wife, Evelyn, raised their 13 children, including seven sons, all of whom have gone on to become famous rodeo riders. But the older Bill gets, the harder it is for him to look after the land, especially amid numerous conflicts with the Bureau of Land Management and a flurry of buyout offers from commercial developers. Branch writes with immediacy when describing cowboy life, whether branding and castrating cattle (the "dirt-covered testicles... looked like dusty pearl onions") or attempting to last eight seconds on the back of a wild and angry mustang (a fallen rider "crashed clumsily on his left shoulder, and the pain shot through him like electricity"). Branch's fly-on-the-wall reporting and evocative prose renders this a memorable tale of family and the American West in a state of flux.