Another Kind of Cowboy

Another Kind of Cowboy by Susan Juby is about a young man discovering his place in the world.

Alex Ford has always loved horses. As a little kid he treated his bike as a horse - going so far as to leave grass clippings near it each night before he went to bed.

Now Alex is a teen. He has a real horse, Turnip, that his dad won in a poker game. He has been competing in local shows, but his dream is to ride dressage - a sort of dancing on horseback and one of the most complicated events involving horses.

When he finds a trainer who will teach him dressage his life changes. All of the parts of his life that he has kept separate - his family, horses, the fact that he is gay - come together to alter his world.

Another Kind of Cowboy is a serious but light look at one teen's coming out story. It will be a hit for anyone who like horse books like Marilyn Halvorsen's Cowboys Don't Cry (one of my all time favorites!) or S.E. Hinton's Tex, but without the melodrama that sometimes make those books too much.

Juby, Susan. (2007). Another Kind of Cowboy. New York: Harper Teen.