I See by Your Outfit: Becoming a Cowboy a Century Too Late

Evans explores the cowboy myth in this quirky coming-of-age memoir. In the 1980s, when he was between the ages of 18 and 24, he lived and worked on ranches from Laramie, Wyo., to Cimarron, N.Mex., and California's San Joaquin Valley, motivated by his desire to prove his manhood, especially to his dictatorial father. With a flinty wit, Evans recounts his fumbling attempts to become the Marlboro Man, which included speaking in a slow, laconic style, drinking heavily, making the obligatory trip to a Nevada brothel and keeping a cool front when his girlfriend dumped him for another guy. Now a columnist and book editor for the Boulder Daily Camera, Colorado-born Evans was not a perfect John Wayne. His best friend and constant companion down lonesome trails was not his horse, but his beloved black dog, Jenny. To add a contemporary touch, he reports seeing a UFO and having three encounters with a ghost. In his metamorphosis from greenhorn to buckaroo--and from pent-up young man to balanced personality and journalist--he learned some hard lessons about humility and stewardship of the earth, which he communicates in gracefully loping prose. In the end, he rejects the archetypal cowboy image--tough, reticent, ruggedly independent to the point of needing no one--as a woefully incomplete version of manhood. For anyone who's ever dreamed of mustangs thundering beneath silvery moonlight, his insightful personal story has undeniable appeal. Evans relives the Old West cowboy mythos even as he updates and deconstructs it. (Nov.)