Sunny Gale by Jamie Lisa Forbes | Book Review ~ Author Guest Post ~ Video Interview | #HistoricalFiction #FemaleRodeoStars #Bookstagram #ReadingCommunity @iReadBookTours @JamieLisaForbes
A book blog tour from iRead Book Tours.
Thank you to the author, publisher, & Lauren at iRead for providing me with the information for this tour. 
Quick Summary
Sunny Gale by Jamie Lisa Forbes is a gripping and empowering tale that will captivate readers who crave stories of strong-willed women, historical adventure, and the unbreakable spirit of those who dare to defy convention and chase their dreams, making it a perfect fit for fans of feminist fiction and historical drama. (SG Preview)
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Book Details
Sunny Gale by Jamie Lisa Forbes
Published by Pronghorn Press on May 15, 2024
Genres: Adult Fiction 18+, Biographical Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
Format: eBook
Pages: 342
Source: iRead Book ToursIt’s 1895 and fourteen year old Hannah Brandt is struggling with the hard life on a new Nebraska homestead. When her imagination is captured by a wild filly she becomes obsessed with horses, which opens the door to her destiny.
Just three years later she enters the first Cheyenne Frontier Day rodeo where she wins the relay race, the following year she wins the bronc riding and her fate is sealed. She gives herself a new name, Sunny Gale, and pursues a rodeo career, much to the disgust of her young husband and her very proper mother.
Sunny defies convention with every move as the drive to compete takes over her life, leaving everything else behind, including husbands and children. It is a rough life she has chosen, but she craves the glory of the spotlight and refuses to bow to the expectations for a woman in her time.
Award winning author Jamie Lisa Forbes has once again brought us complex characters in a story based on real women and the early days when s when rodeo was wide open for them to become stars. It is a story of the social mores of the times and of a woman determined to defy them no matter how high the personal cost or where that choice might take her.
Content Rating: PG-13 +M: There is no profane language. There are some sexual scenes, non-explicit. There is one instance of sexual abuse that is more recollected than described. My reason for giving this rating was two scenes where animals are intentionally harmed.
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Purchase Links for Sunny Gale
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Forbes, Jamie Lisa (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 297 Pages - 05/21/2024 (Publication Date) - Pronghorn Press (Publisher)
If the above link does not route you to your country’s Amazon page, please let me know, and I’ll gladly get a link for you.
Using my link does not change the price you pay. Amazon pays me a minimal amount out of their share. Every penny helps to support this blog.
Purchase Sunny Gale online from your local bookstore.
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Authors on iTours
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My thoughts on Sunny Gale
Sunny Gale brings readers deep into a world of family tensions and tender aspirations. Jamie Lisa Forbes captures rural life’s grit and quiet beauty with a gentle authenticity that feels both honest and familiar. The story centers around Sunny, a young girl caught in the turbulence of family dynamics and poverty in mid-century America, yearning for more than what life seems to offer.
Sunny’s voice is clear, hopeful, and grounded—qualities that make her a relatable protagonist. Through her eyes, we see the raw dreams and unspoken sacrifices that define her family and Sunny’s fight to live life on her terms.
Sunny Gale doesn’t shy away from difficult truths and also gives room for growth, hope, and resilience in even the most challenging circumstances.
Jamie Lisa Forbes has written a quietly powerful novel that lingers long after the final page, offering readers a glimpse into lives that are as universal as they are deeply rooted in the specific soil of the American heartland.
I received a copy of the book for the tour. This review is my honest, unbiased opinion.
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I love to read books through my Amazon Kindle Unlimited subscription.
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About Jamie Lisa Forbes
Jamie Lisa Forbes was raised on a ranch on the Little Laramie River thirty miles west of Laramie, Wyoming. Like many Wyoming children of her generation, she attended a one-room schoolhouse during her early school years.
She received a degree in Philosophy and English from the University of Colorado in 1977. She spent the next year and a half of her life in Israel, where she met her husband.
In January 1979, Ms. Forbes and her husband returned to the Little Laramie Valley where, for fifteen years, they ran the family ranch and raised two children.
The Forbes family ranch was sold in 1993 and Ms. Forbes then moved to Greensboro, North Carolina. She began writing her first novel, Unbroken, while in law school.
In 2011, Unbroken won the WILLA Literary Award for best outstanding fiction about women in the West. Her short story collection, The Widow Smalls and Other Stories, published by Pronghorn Press in 2014, won the 2015 High Plains Book Awards, short story category. Her second novel, Eden, was published in 2020, and her third novel, Sunny Gale, A Novel, was published by Pronghorn Press in 2024.
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Guest Post
MY PARENTS
My disagreements with my parents boil down to one key circumstance of our lives: I grew up on a ranch and they didn’t.
Was there a “right” reason in the early 1950’s for two college-educated people to turn their backs on opportunity, careers, cultural resources and in my mother’s case, family, and settle on twenty-thousand acres in Wyoming’s notoriously harsh southeastern corner? This question will haunt me forever for both my parents, at various moments in their lives, regretted this decision.
My father’s family had been in farming or ranching for many generations. Although his maternal grandfather served in state government, no one in his family resembled him. He had a hunger for knowledge of nearly all subjects. He loved classical literature and classical music. He read the Roman classics in Latin. He learned classical Greek so he could read The Odyssey in its original language. He studied it at nights after work on the ranch.
He was raised in Cheyenne and Laramie, so he had no immediate connection to the outdoors. But he spent his childhood summers on ranches that members of his family owned in Nebraska. That’s where he fell in love with being outdoors.
After graduating from Yale Law School, he told me he just couldn’t find fulfillment in hours spent over casebooks. He wanted to be outdoors. He asked his father if he could go work on the ranch his father had just purchased along the Little Laramie River. His father responded, “It’s a hard life.” He had been there two years when he met my mother in 1953.
My mother was raised in Manhattan, the daughter of first-generation Jewish Americans whose families had immigrated from Eastern Europe. She was so bright that she skipped two years of elementary school and graduated from Bennington College at age 20. Her parents had the good sense to make her spend a few weeks of winter at the ranch, but it didn’t waver her determination to marry my father. She fell for the romance, I suppose, of pioneering a new life in the most stunning landscape.
They grew tired of the endless weight of it, each in their own separate ways. But for me, what a wondrous place to be! Endless acres to explore, trees to climb, the river to play in. The brilliant sunsets, meteor showers like fireworks at nights. Mule deer and elk. Weasels and red foxes. I didn’t mind being alone. I grew up knowing it could be weeks before we saw people other than ourselves.
Although I liked trips to cities, I never felt a desire to live in them. My mother’s preoccupation with style, presentation and decorum I could neither absorb nor understand. And when my father was ready to leave the ranch after thirty years, he was stuck with a child who refused to go. He had his moments when he resented me for that—I know he did.
I was the product of their dreams, and neither was entirely pleased with the result. That’s the pitfall in dreams coming true.
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Official Tour Page for Sunny Gale
Full Tour Schedule:
Oct 21 – Cover Lover Book Review – book spotlight
Oct 21– @stars.and.embers * – book review
Oct 22 – @acourtofspinesnpages * – book review
Oct 22 – @bearyintobooks * – book review
Oct 22–@adriftinfictionalworld – book review
Oct 24 – Deborah-Zenha Adams – book spotlight / author interview
Oct 24 – @this.human.reads * – book review
Oct 25–Book Corner News and Reviews – book review
Oct 28 – Sharing Life’s Moments – book review
Oct 28 – Gina Rae Mitchell – book review / guest post
Oct 28 – @jilljemmett * – book review
Oct 28 – @onceuponamaltesereader * – book review
Oct 29 – @bookameme * – book review
Oct 30 – Locks, Hooks and Books – book review / guest post
Oct 30 – @kiv_coffeeandpages * – book review
Oct 31 – Cheryl’s Book Nook – book review
Oct 31 – @alwaysreadingxo * – book review
Nov 1 – @Leannebookstagram – book review
Nov 2 – @readsandmusic * – book review
Nov 4 – FUONLYKNEW – book review / guest post
Nov 5 – Books R Us – book spotlight / guest post
Nov 5 – Country Mamas With Kids – book review
Nov 6 – Bigreadersite – book review
Nov 7 – Connie’s History Classroom – book review / author interview
Nov 8 – Liese’s Blog – book spotlight
Nov 8 – @bookscape__ * – book review
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Book Title: SUNNY GALE: A NOVEL by Jamie Lisa Forbes
Category: Adult Fiction 18+, 268 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction, Literary Novel
Publisher: Pronghorn Press
Release date: May 2024
Tour dates: Oct 21 to Nov 8, 2024
Content Rating: PG-13 +M: There is no profane language. There are some sexual scenes, non-explicit. There is one instance of sexual abuse that is more recollected than described. I gave this rating because of two scenes where animals are intentionally harmed.
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What a lovely post showcasing my novel. I am very grateful. And thank you for your kind words about my novel, Sunny Gale.