Try

A young Wyoming artist must decide if a May-December romance with a rodeo champion is a risk worth taking in this debut novel.

“My God, it’s refreshing to read a novel as good and rank and honest as Try.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

TRY: a rodeo rider’s mettle in the face of being thrown off time after time . . .

In Denver, Colorado, Daryl Heatherly is a promising young artist, hoping to find the place she fits in. Back home in the country just outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming—the real west—she’s returning to the last place her family all lived together, to a life bordered only by sage and sky. And it’s there she rubs up against J.W. Jarrett, a World Champion rodeo cowboy and old-school Southern gentleman. Against her better judgment—not to mention that of her best friend, Shawna, and over-protective brother, Jace—Daryl forges ahead despite her own recent heartbreak, not only dating J.W., but joining him on the circuit to watch him ride. Even though the chemistry between them is immediate and undeniable, Daryl is determined not to fall for a cowboy, with all the dust and drama that implies—especially when she finds out that J.W. is a man with secrets. But Daryl hasn’t counted on the grit of a man who has outlasted every other rider in the ring—her cowboy isn’t going to give up that easily . . .

A love story set in the New West world of honky-tonks, buckle bunnies and pointy-toed boots, TRY is a fast, fresh, sensually charged novel about holding on to what you love despite all the bumps and bruises.

“[Burana] earns her spurs by capturing the roar of the crowd, the smell of the horses and, most important, the heartbreak of the rodeo circuit for both cowboys and cowgirls.” —Washington Post

“Powerful and passionate . . . a wonderfully insightful tour of the world of rodeo cowboys and the women who care for them.” —Madison Smartt Bell, author of Waiting for the End of the World

“It's hard not to feel affection for a writer who starts her first novel with the sentence: ‘Before I left Cheyenne, I set my ex-boyfriend on fire.’” —New York Post