Overview
Sarah Bird authors brilliant, captivating novels such as The Yokota Officer's Club. Virgin of the Rodeo takes listeners on a riotous journey across the wide open spaces of Texas with a truly unique character named Sonja Getz. Sonja is seen as a curiosity in the minuscule Texas town of Dorfburg. Twenty-nine-years-old, and big-boned, she is purported to be the daughter of a famous Native American trick-roper. Her mother, Tinka, a transplanted German who despises Americans, has never understood book-crazed, dark-skinned Sonja. Now that her mother is marrying a fang-toothed linoleum salesman, Sonja may finally get the chance to move out of the stifling burg and begin a search for the father she has never known. With an unforgettable cast of characters, Bird's enjoyable novel never fails to intrigue. Cynthia Darlow's animated narration perfectly suits Bird's richly descriptive prose.
Hoping to find the trick-roping father who left her as a baby, cowgirl/intellectual Sonja hooks up with a roper named Prairie Jim. 2 cassettes.
Synopsis
If you liked the offbeat heroine of "Fried Green Tomatoes," you'll love Sonja Getz - the town loner, a cowgirl/intellectual - who's bursting to get out of her small Texas town and find the trick-roping father who left her as a baby. She hooks up with her only hope, a down-at-the-heels roper who promises to take her to her father even though he knows Sonja is not expecting what she will find.
Publishers Weekly
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. (Sept.)