Jamie Lisa Forbes Spotlights Four Novels on Western Ambition and Resilience

Award-winning author Jamie Lisa Forbes is highlighting four fiction works—Sunny Gale—A Novel, Unbroken, The Widow Smalls and Other Stories, and EDEN—that examine ambition, hardship, family, injustice and resilience across the American West and changing South. Her newest historical novel follows Hannah Brandt, a young woman who becomes the rodeo rider Sunny Gale after discovering her talent on the late-19th-century Nebraska plains. The story explores her battles with gender expectations, rivalry, injury, grief, marriage and motherhood while drawing on the overlooked history of female rodeo competitors. Forbes’s Wyoming ranching background and later legal career inform her portrayals of rural communities and difficult personal choices.