Bull Rider
by Suzanne Morgan Williams
upper middle grade/ya
Drugs, sex, teenage pregnancy, you name it, children's authors write about it. Suzanne Morgan Williams is no different. She has taken on perhaps the mother of all controversial issues for this country, the war on terrorism. Bull Rider's story is current, it's controversial, but far more importantly, it's really really well-written. Any book can take on controversy, but take it on without becoming preachy, now that's good writing.
Cam O'Mara's older brother is a marine. He goes off to fight in the Middle East, is injured, and comes back home a very different person. Cam's family struggles with the effects of war on their own world, the world at large, and the way people see them. Cam, a skateboarder by passion, turns to bull-riding, a time-honored family profession, because it is the only way he can escape the discomfort and uncertainty of his life. In the end, he chooses bull-riding to help his brother realize that if Cam can face his fears and straddle a thousand pounds of bull, then his brother can face his, learning to walk again.
This isn't a light read. It isn't a comfortable one. But it is unforgettable. Williams isn't preachy. There are no easy answers to war, not for those opposing, those waging it, and especially not for those fighting it. Her characters are well-shaped, offering all sides to the debate but no judgments. Family, love, hanging in there for each other, these are the driving force of her story.
Read it. It'll make you think.
And for other great reads this crazy December month, hop over to Barrie Summy's blog.
...Day Two with Suzanne Morgan Williams, author of Bull Rider
Nevada author Suzanne Morgan Williams calls herself a research junkie. You get the sense that for her, researching elements of her new novel Bull Rider was one of the best ways she knew to engage in her story. “I love to do research and writing Bull Rider I was terrified I’d get something wrong—big or little—so I did a lot of it,” she says.
To find out more about bull riding she interviewed ranchers and professional bull riders, and visited a local bull riding ring. When it came to the Iraq war she read injured soldiers’ blogs and visited the VA hospital and Fisher House in Palo Alto. But she didn’t stop there.
Because her character, Cam, is a skateboarder, she went to Winnemucca’s skate park and asked a skater to demonstrate the moves Cam would make on his skateboard, “to be sure the tricks were actually doable.”
The Nevada landscape in Bull Rider came to her naturally, though. “I love Nevada,” says Williams. “And I truly enjoyed taking quiet moments in the book to describe the smell of wet sage brush or the call of a meadow lark.
“I think the public may see the open range as idyllic and the people who live there as somehow different,” she adds. “Maybe old fashioned or from a bygone era.” So it was especially rewarding for her to portray a modern kid in a small town. “One who skateboards and surfs the Internet for the newest You-tube videos.
“I don’t think there are any places where time stands still,” she notes. “Just places where people choose to hold on to some traditions.” For her, the traditional background of Cam’s family provided an excellent contrast to the very contemporary and difficult problems they faced.
A family dealing with a son returning from Iraq with traumatic brain injury (TBI) wasn’t always in the plot. Originally the novel was a school story about Cam. The story about two brothers evolved with each draft.
To begin with, she knew she “wanted the book to include lots of action scenes. And if you’re writing a book called Bull Rider that’s bull riding.”
The idea of an older brother returning from Iraq came up while Williams was outlining Cam’s family. Since she knew Cam was from a ranching family involved in rodeo, she gave him an older brother who was a champion bull rider.
“From being a sister and a mom I knew there would be feelings of competition from that,” Williams says. “And when I asked the question, what’s that brother doing now? I knew he’d be in the service.”
What was it like for her writing from Cam’s perspective?
“When I write boy characters, I try to channel some real emotions and situations from their point of view,” she says. “I don’t write down to anyone, boy or girl and I hope girls will love Bull Rider, too.”
The truth is, engaging in a boy’s perspective meant simply engaging in the emotional journey itself.
“There definitely was an emotional journey,” she says. “I don’t think it’s over yet. I’m always a little shy about arranging research and it felt a little invasive to be asking questions about a fictional young man who was seriously injured in Iraq.”
At first, she avoided the issue by avoiding writing about Cam’s brother, Ben. Then she thought Ben would be paralyzed below the waist, but found in her research that TBI was a much more prominent injury for Iraq vets today.
“That set me to learning about TBI and its affects—not an easy thing,” says Williams. “It also required I totally rewrite Ben.
“But I believe this version of Bull Rider is the book I was meant to write,” she adds. “I hope readers will learn about TBI and the toll it takes—and that more people will be aware of the debt we owe to so many of the wounded from this war.”
About the Author…Bull Rider might be Susan Morgan Williams’s first novel, but she’s long been engaged in writing. She’s authored eleven books for children including Made in China, Ideas and Inventions from Ancient China, (Pacific View Press, 1997) and The Inuit (Franklin Watts, 2003). Her research has taken her four times to the Canadian Arctic to work with Inuit people and she’s also worked closely with Native Americans from various tribes on several books and projects.
Williams has been a Nevada Artist in Residence, a recipient of several Nevada Arts Council Jackpot Grants, and was awarded a Sierra Arts Foundation Fellowship Grant. Bull Rider is a Junior Library Guild Selection for 2009.
…next engagement? A very special look at books from the other side of the fence.
… z.v.
Yesterday, when we got out of the car, we crossed a threshold. From silence to song. Crossing that threshold speaks to the nature of engagement, a willingness to interact. It’s what we ask of readers when they open our books. And what we do when we ourselves write them.
A threshold invites us to step on through. But it’s up to each of us whether or not we enter.
If you’ve ever had a flash of an idea you failed to write down, you know about not stepping through.
And if you’ve ever had an idea you listened to that bore fruit, you know about crossing over. You know it’s magical. And that all you had to do to tap the magic was to pay attention.
Today I’m thrilled to announce the results of tapping that magic for two debut novelists...
SUZANNE MORGAN WILLIAMS and ROSANNE PARRY
and their novels
BULL RIDER
and HEART OF A SHEPHERD:
An unexpected gift of launching The Lucky Place has been meeting other writers at book festivals and conferences. So it’s especially fun to congratulate these two, having met and made friends with them in my travels.
Parry’s novel Heart of a Shepherd was released last month from Random House.
And Williams’ Bull Rider debuts this month from Margaret K. McElderry Books.
Their books just happen to be among the first novels launched at The Class of 2k9!
And what’s really close to my heart is that both novels are set in the west. Heart of a Shepherd in eastern Oregon and Bull Rider in Nevada. And since Bull Rider is launching this very week, I talked Suzanne into giving us the scoop….
To begin, Bull Rider is an upper middle grade about fourteen-year-old Cam O’Mara, a ranch kid from the sage brush country of central Nevada. He’s a skateboarder, not a champion bull rider like his brother Ben. But after Ben joins the Marines and is seriously injured in Iraq, Cam turns to his family traditions—in particular bull riding—as a way to overcome his grief and eventually give his brother new hope.
Williams says the initial spark for Bull Rider actually came about in conversation with an editor who was visiting her in Reno.
“I’d been telling her stories about the west,” she recalls. “Stories I’d learned from Indian elders while writing a non-fiction series." (More on Suzanne's background later). Intrigued, the editor suggested she write a book set in Nevada.
“I told her I could write about cowboys or rodeo,” Williams remembers. “She asked what kind of rodeo. I told her bull riders are crazy enough.”
And the idea was born...
…next… Suzanne tells us how engaging in a boy’s perspective was simply engaging in the emotional journey itself.
Bull Rider
