Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Linda McMaken | All About "Baers"
Author Guest / October 3, 2011

Ideas for books come from the strangest places. Joe Baer and the Baer Brothers sort of sneaked up on me one summer day. My family and I were taking a trip to the western U.S. with tickets in hand for the Cheyenne Frontier Days in Cheyenne Wyoming. We’d never been that far west before, so for us Easterners it was quite the adventure with long stretches of prairie, mighty rivers, and vast cattle ranches. Thousands of cattle dotted the hillsides and we were stunned by how many. Most of us never realize how many of those four-legged critters it takes to feed a nation all those hamburgers! As conversations tend to get a bit weird when we travel, my kids began telling awful cow jokes and my husband started naming cows that were close to the road; “That brown and white one, that’s Mrs. Sirloin, over there is Mr. T-bone and that large black one, well, that would be Mr. Roast.” My thoughts however went to the ranchers and the families that lived there. I wondered who they were, and what their story was. Then I made the mistake of letting my muse actually speak aloud; (a rare thing as…