For twelve months, a grown man lived every young boy's dream.

David McCumber is a Westerner born and raised, reared like so many others on the great myths of the rugged individualists who braved a hard land and the elements to expand a nation. More than any other national icon, the American cowboy personifies our past- a lone figure venerated in literature and popular culture for his ability and stubbon courage, for his "quick draw" and purity of purpose, and for his unwavering ethics of simple honesty, loyalty and hard work. So in February of his forty-fourth year, McCumber went to work on rancher Bill Galt's expansive Birch Creek spread in Montana, to take a measure of himself by becoming-albeit for only four seaons-one of a fabled breed.

The Cowboy Way is an enthralling and intensely personal account of a year spent in open country that expertly weaves past and present into the vibrant and colorful tapestry of a vanishing way of life. At once a celebration of a breathtaking land both dangerous and nourishing, and clear-eyed appreciation of the men-and women-who work it, David McCumber's remarkable story forever alters our long-held perceptions of the "Roy Rogers" cowboy with real-life experiences and hard economic truths. What emerges is an unforgetable portrait of a uniquely American personality-one firmly tied to the romance of an earlier age while riding the modern range in pickups and 4X4s. Lyrical and compelling, McCumber's chronicle of his time spent at Birch Creek, is an exhilarating adventure of the body, spirit and senses-and it will boldly reshape every reader's vision of our heritage and our heroes. One man's journey into the heart of the American West.

Amazon.com Review
The cowboy as hero, David McCumber reminds us, is one of America's abiding myths. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood--even the ubiquitous Marlboro man--endure as symbols, perhaps because of our need to believe (in a technology-savvy, urbanized culture) that "cleaner country ... something rougher, less despoiled, harder to win" still exists.

At midlife, McCumber abandoned "corporate striving" in California and spent a year learning what it means to be a real cowboy at one of Montana's largest ranches. His unsentimental, gritty, yet evocative account defies and confirms our preconceptions. Cowboying, he quickly learns, has always meant backbreaking, isolating work: mending endless stretches of fence, weeks spent digging ditches, rousting livestock in subzero weather. But ranch life has not been immune to the times: today's cowboys choose four-wheel drive vehicles over horses, regularly deliver calves by cesarean section, and might as easily hold a degree in English as in agriculture.

Ultimately, McCumber reveals that the cowboy is alive and kicking in the West, his ethic defined by a firm belief in the value of hard work and an unshakable respect for the weather and the land. "Cowboys are heroes," he tells us, "but not of the Hollywood variety. Their heroism comes in small portions. John Wayne may have saved the stampeding herd in Red River, but in real life the herd is saved one calf at a time." --Svenja Soldovieri