THE HISTORY BEHIND MY HERO
It’s
the 1970s and Cooper Byrnes, my hero in Always
on My Mind, is not warm and fuzzy.
He’s not one of these cuddly guys everyone likes immediately—and there’s
a reason for that. Coop has a ranch to
run, he’s up at 5 a.m., if not earlier, every day, rain or shine, weekday or
holiday, blizzard or dangerous heat wave.
This was what has formed Coop. But there’s something else that has
shaped Coop the way he is—History.
The
1970s were a time of change and tumultuous happenings Coop would never be able
to fully understand. There was a conservative backlash to the radicalism of the
1960s, and these people wanted, for better or worse, to hang on to traditional
family values and have less government meddling in their lives. President Nixon
began to undo all of his predecessor’s, president Johnson, War on Poverty. The New Right fought against high taxes,
environment regulations, affirmative action, and even speed limits. While the
heartland of the south was the center of these ideals, they certainly would
have been welcomed by men like Coop in the West.
Then
there was the Equal Rights Amendment. Suffragist Alice Paul had, believe it or
not, introduced the ERA to Congress every year since 1923. In 1972 Congress finally ratified it but only
35 of the necessary 38 states passed it. The ERA reads, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” Not something many men would have been happy
to adhere to in the 1970s, and certainly not on a ranch.
So, yes, Cooper’s world is changing and he has to get
used to it. Whether this makes him a
better, more likeable man in the four years’ course of the book is up to you to
decide.
1972 - Vietnam, the pill,
upheaval, hippies.
Wyoming rancher Cooper Byrnes, deeply attached to the land and his way of life,
surprises everyone when he falls for vagabond hippie Cassie Halliday.
Fascinated and baffled, he cannot comprehend his attraction—or say the words
she wants to hear.
Cassie finds Coop intriguingly different. As she keeps house for him and warms
his bed at night, she admits to herself she loves him but she misinterprets
Coop's inability to express his feelings.
Parted, each continues to think of the other, but how can either of them reach
out to say, "You were 'always on my mind'?"
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EXCERPT:
As night colored the sky, Cassie pulled open her
curtain and peered out as shades of pink and purple streaked across the
treetops tinged by a blackness off to the east. Storm clouds. She could feel
the sudden September chill, heard the propane heating click on, Coop enter the
kitchen with the dogs whining downstairs. He stomped off his boots for the
night. She supposed he was looking after himself, just the way he had lived
before she ever came on the scene, cooking whatever he liked to eat, having his
beers, occasionally watching TV, Elam and Wayne at his feet, before climbing up
to bed. And she supposed he realized at some point she would have to come out
and start living again, either here, or moving on if she couldn’t forgive him.
Love, to her, had always been difficult to
define. She believed it to be something deep inside, something shared, a song
in your head playing constantly in the background. Always there. It was your
heart skipping and your stomach somersaulting when the person walked in the
room, got close. And that was what she felt for Coop now, those were her very
feelings every time he got near. Even though she believed those feelings were
not returned, she knew the thought of leaving him was painful. He offered her a
steadfastness, a certainty, a support she hadn’t experienced before, small
kindnesses she enjoyed and wouldn’t want to do without. And maybe that was it:
she didn’t like the thought of doing without him, of leaving.
Hearing sports come on the TV, she snuck out to
wash for bed, still ignoring the chocolates where he’d left them. Later, she
lay in bed and listened to his routine she knew so well now, the clunk of his
belt buckle as his jeans hit the floor, the little hop of getting his leg in
his pajama bottoms, and his stroll down to the bathroom to wash, and back again
before the light clicked off. It wasn’t long before soft snores came through
the wall and Cassie realized she missed all that, the way he curled around her
in that big, old bed, their feet entwined, his head nuzzled into her shoulder
sometimes, the grizzle of his day’s beard growth against her skin. She thought
of sneaking into the bed but gave up the idea; he’d probably just throw an arm
over her and fall back to sleep, say nothing except maybe ‘I knew you’d come
’round.’
It was a crash of thunder that woke her,
followed by the sound of something like a lover throwing pebbles against the
window, but this was no lover. Its power was so forceful, she thought the
window might break. As she pulled back the curtain, blades of lightening mapped
the sky, a deep indigo when lit, the forks like veins in the sky’s skin. She
heard the rustle of Coop waking, the creak of him sitting up in bed. For a
moment she sat watching, and then realized her garden would be decimated.
She grabbed an old shirt of his she used as a
bathrobe, unlatched the door, crashed barefoot into the box of chocolates, sent
them flying and scattered all over, as they fell from the hallway, through the
banister, into the corridor below. She flew down the stairs. Cooper appeared as
he pulled on his jeans and a shirt and followed behind her.
“Cassie, don’t, don’t, it’s too late and there’s
lightning!”
She pulled open the kitchen door and ran into
the garden, fumbled with the new gate to yank it open, tried to protect her
head from the pounding hail, hail the size of her fist. Cooper had pulled on
his boots and made a grab for her, but she wrenched away, unsure of what to do
to save the remains of her crops.
“You’re not gonna save anything now, Cass,” he
shouted above the maelstrom, “give it up, get back inside, I have to go see to
the cattle!”
The dogs appeared on the path, out of the
kitchen where they’d been sleeping, set up a yowling that added to the din.
Sick of seeing all her hard work lay ruined, she turned and pushed past Coop
who stood helpless. She grabbed a knife from the kitchen block and came back
out, cut heads of cabbage, and whatever else she felt she could save. But it
was no use: the hail continued to beat her, and she shivered with the cold,
shaking. The shirt stuck to her lithe body until she collapsed in the mud.
“Cassie, you can’t do any more, you best get
inside sweetheart, it was the end of the season anyway.” He bent over her,
soaked through himself, his hair plastered to his head. “Cassie?” He knelt
beside her, watched helplessly as the sobs came, wracked her body, swaying with
its pain.
He gathered her up into his arms just as Hank’s
pickup pulled into the yard and he and the older cowboy got out,
slicker-covered, and looked on.
“We’ll saddle up,” the elder said, his voice
drowned in the rumble of the storm. “You come on, Coop, when you can.”
A native New Yorker, Andrea Downing currently divides her time between the canyons of city streets and the wide-open spaces of Wyoming. Her background in publishing and English Language teaching has transferred into fiction writing, and her love of horses, ranches, rodeo, and just about anything else western, is reflected in her award-winning historical and contemporary western romances.
She has been a finalist in the RONE Awards for Best American Historical Romance twice, placed in the International Digital Awards twice, and won ‘Favorite Hero’ along with Honorable Mentions for Favorite Heroine, Short Story and Novel in the Maple Leaf Awards. Her book, Dearest Darling, has also won The Golden Quill Award for Best Novella and been on the short list for winning The Chanticleer Award for Best Short or Novella.
To learn more about Andrea
and her books, you can find her at:
Twitter: @andidowning https://twitter.com/AndiDowning
