The Prairie of Prairie Dog Cowboy
by Vivian Zabel

The setting for Prairie Dog Cowboy was fictionalized but exists in the Oklahoma Panhandle. The prairie runs from what is now northeast Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, and north into Kansas and Nebraska.

Many people think the panhandle is drab, ugly, and flat. Not so. Yes, a person may think the land is flat because few, if any hills, are found, but the land has unexpected valleys and gullies that contain green, living things.

The view is spectacular in its own way. I’ve stood outside the house where my husband grew up and looked “forever” in all directions. The sky bright and blue arched above my head. The horizon stretched at the edge of the skyline miles and miles away. At night, the stars against the black velvet of darkness seemed closer than in other places. The lights of towns twenty to thirty miles away could be seen without trouble.

The gullies, deep and rather narrow cuts in the land caused by wind and rain run-offs, often hide green grass when the land above is dry and grass is brown. Valleys, which are different than gullies in that they are usually wider and have more flood plain created by rivers, are filled with trees and lush plant life.

Along the roads in pastures of prairie grass and man-planted plants, cattle graze, slick and fat. Fields of wheat or milo, sometimes corn, can be found creating breaks between thousands of acres of native pasture.

In the book, the ranches owned by the Hyman family and James Buck are found along the Beaver River. Much of the area used as the Buck ranch and a portion of the ranch used as the Hyman ranch were taken by the government to make the Optima Lake and hunting area. The land still exists though, cutting through the Oklahoma Panhandle prairie.

Buddy rode and worked the land that can still be found, rich and valuable filled with hardworking people.


Prairie Dog Cowboy

4RV Publishing

Vivian Gilbert Zabel

Prairie Dog Cowboy coming soon

More on Vivian and Prairie Dog Cowboy coming later this week. The guest posting article should be posted tomorrow. It's fun learning something historical you never knew. Come check out what Vivian has to say on prairie living.


SYNOPSIS OF PRAIRIE DOG COWBOY:
Description of Prairie Dog Cowboy by V. Gilbert Zabel

Genre: middle grade/ young adult / historical fiction
Publisher: 4RV Publishing
Hardback, 180 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0-9797513-5-6
ISBN-10: 0-9797513-5-7

Time passes so quickly and history is getting rewritten all the time. So much of our heritage is lost with those changes. It is refreshing to see a slice of reality portraying the daily life of 1899 Oklahoma in V. Gilbert Zabel's latest literary work, "Prairie Dog Cowboy".

Buddy Roberts is but a small boy at the start of the story. It isn’t clear right away why his mother is set against the child. Although he has an older brother, he's tending to the cattle at the age of five, all alone with only his dog to keep him company. Buddy is a mindful child, doing what needs to be done, even at such a young age, hoping some day to grow up to be a cowboy. Instead of him and Patch doing the work on foot, he dreams of herding cattle on horseback someday.

Neighbor rancher Caleb Hyman is impressed with Buddy. He wonders, too, why the child works hard while his older brother, Jake, is doted on and spoiled. But, Caleb can see the man that Buddy will become, encourages him, and teaches him to rope. Once Buddy can rope a prairie dog, Caleb promises he'll give the boy a job on his ranch. Not an easy thing to do, but Buddy works hard to reach his appointed goal.

Through the years, Buddy becomes a part of Caleb's family, a friend of Caleb's twin sons, and the unknowing object of affection for their younger sister, Katie. Life begins to take a turn for the better as he approaches manhood. An ironic twist at the end brings the cycle of life in full circle.

Let's meet Vivian, author of Prairie Dog Cowboy

Vivian Gilbert was born to Raymond and Dolly Gilbert, July 28, 1943, on Randolph Air Force Base, Texas. The base for years was outside the city of San Antonio, but now the city surrounds the base.

With a military father who was transferred around the world, Vivian often changed schools, in fact when she graduated from high school in Limestone, Maine, she had changed schools twenty-two times.

After graduating from high school in 1961, Vivian returned to Oklahoma where she enrolled in Bethany Nazarene College (now Southern Nazarene University, in Bethany, Oklahoma). During the one semester she could afford to attend, Robert Zabel visited his sister, and Vivian and Robert met. They married February 18, 1962 and are still together.

During the next few years, Robert and Vivian had four children, three of whom lived. A story that shows the love and closeness between the couple is found in the short story “Romance Midst Tragedy,” published in Hidden Lies and Other Stories.

As she reared her children and was a stay-at-home-mother, with spells of working in the business world, Vivian wrote short stories, poetry, and articles, which were published. Once her children were in school, Vivian returned to college and, in two and a half years, earned her BA with two majors (English and speech).

Vivian attended workshops, clinics, conferences, and classes about writing during her twenty-seven years of teaching. The further education helped her better teach her students and helped her hone her own writing skills. Finally in 2001 she was able to write full time and write longer works, after she retired from teaching.

At present, Vivian has six books to her credit, two co-authored. Her latest books are Prairie Dog Cowboy (written under the name V. Gilbert Zabel) and Midnight Hours (written under the name Vivian Gilbert Zabel).

Her interests besides writing include her family (husband, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren), reading, helping other people publish their books (through 4RV Publishing), and traveling (which she can’t do much any more).

Links:
4RV Publishing
Vivian Gilbert Zabel
Midnight Hours
Prairie Dog Cowboy

For ordering information:
Click here or go to Amazon

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Check back later in the week for an article on life on the prairies of Oklahoma that is tied into Vivian's new book "Prairie Dog Cowboy".