Virgin of the Rodeo

Sonja Getz, a strapping, loud-mouthed outcast from small-town Texas, hitches up with an over-the-hill trick roper to search for the father who abandoned her as an infant

The search for a delinquent father drives Texas writer Bird's ( The Mommy Club ; The Boyfriend School ) waggish and wonderful novel about the Southwest rodeo circuit out of the chute and into the winners' circle. Ample-hipped, 29-year-old Sonja (for Sonja Henie) Gets knows that she's the product of a fling her tiny German-born mom Tinka had in Frankfurt in 1964 with a traveling Native American rope-twirler, who hasn't been heard from since. Sporting her multi-ethnic outfits and renaming herself Son Hozro (Navajo for "harmony with nature"), the heroine haunts the rodeos looking for dad. When geriatric Tinka picks a doddery new mate, Son wraps up her pest-control business and hits the road with determination. She meets trick-roper Prairie James, a horny, manipulative has-been whose pompous macho attitudes Son ably punctures with plentiful feminist sass and voluble wit. When Prairie hints he might locate her parent, Son pays her own way as Prairie's fast-talking announcer on their bumpy odyssey, a partnership rife with roughhousing. The reader is treated to an insider's tour of the rodeo, including the women's, blacks' and gays' version of this bit of vibrant Americana. Bird equips Son with her own gift of twirly high-flying palaver that is as flamboyant, skillful and fun to behold as a loop-spinner's lariat. Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The author of The Mommy Club (1991), etc., ventures deep into farcical territory with a Pecos-Bill-style tale--about a Texas misfit who joins the rodeo to find her long-lost father. Sonja Getz would always be out of place in a town like Dorfburg, Texas--the spot where her mother, minuscule Tinka Getz, washed ashore and shortly afterwards gave birth. An adorable blond Fr„ulein whose fascination with noble savages led to an unwise affair with a quarter-breed American serviceman in Germany, Tinka landed in Texas unwed and pregnant, but was embraced nevertheless by the sentimental German-Americans she found there. Big-boned, book-addicted Sonja, on the other hand, was left to grow up in utter solitude, comforting herself with fantasies of her absent father, whom she assumed from a publicity photo found in her mother's dresser to be a Navajo trick roper, stoically referring to herself as a woman of color, and operating a faltering pest-control business. When Tinka remarries and kicks 29-year-old Sonja out, the dour young woman marches off to the local rodeo, where she hires quarrelsome trick roper Prairie James to help her find her dad. The mismatched pair rumble across Texas and New Mexico in James's rusty van with his horse, Domino, riding in back, ducking into various rodeos along the way to chat it up with such satisfying potential fathers as wizened old Cootie Ramos and Prairie's former roping mentor, El Marinero. In the end, Sonja learns the horrible truth behind her parentage--but since by that time she's discovered her own amazing talent for rodeo announcing, fallen in love with a refreshment-booth proprietor, and helped rescue Prairie James from his muddled past, the bad news has little effect. Bird's extra-broad, cartoon-like humor here may disappoint ``Mommy Club'' fans--but it's probably safe to say that no one's ever invented a rodeo gal like this before. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Bird is one of several novelists who write in the funny, wisecracking, characters-with-quirky-names-and-personalities genre. Authors Rita Mae Brown, Fannie Flagg, Sarah Gilbert, and Tim Sandlin come to mind as compatriots, but there are others. The main character in Bird's fourth effort (others include The Boyfriend School , LJ 3/15/89, and The Mommy Club , LJ 4/15/91) is Sonja Getz of Dorfburg, Texas, who upon reaching her 30th birthday decides to go in search of her long-lost father. She shares this odyssey with reluctant partner Prairie James, a professional rope-twirler doing the second-rate rodeo circuit. They meet "cute" and continue to have "cute" adventures all along the way to the predictable ending. And therein lies the problem with this ultimately unsatisfying novel. Bird is a good, funny writer, but quirky characters and cute adventures don't add up to much, and relating to them is difficult. Recommended only where there is demand for Bird's books.
- Rosellen Brewer, Monterey Bay Area Cooperative Lib. System, Cal.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.