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Greensboro, North Carolina, USA – September 16, 2026 – In stories spanning the Western frontier, twentieth-century Wyoming ranch country and the segregated American South, award-winning author Jamie Lisa Forbes gives a voice to those individuals pushed to the margins in their communities.

Her books Sunny Gale—A Novel, Unbroken, The Widow Smalls and Other Stories and EDEN examine what happens when women, children, laborers, widows, mothers and social outsiders begin questioning the roles that have been expected of them.

Forbes’s work is distinguished by her authentic understanding of rural life. Raised on a Wyoming ranch, she writes with intimate knowledge of horses, cattle, isolation, financial uncertainty, dangerous weather and the complicated dependence that binds members of a small community together. Her fiction avoids presenting rural America as either picturesque or hopeless. Instead, it reveals a world in which beauty and cruelty, freedom and obligation, often exist side by side.

That vision is especially vivid in Sunny Gale—A Novel, a sweeping historical novel about the forgotten era when women competed in some of rodeo’s most dangerous events.

The story begins with Hannah Brandt, a fourteen-year-old girl who arrives on the Nebraska plains in 1895. Her fascination with horses gives her a sense of identity and possibility unavailable within the conventional expectations imposed upon young women. She eventually competes at Cheyenne Frontier Days, wins public recognition and introduces herself to the world as Sunny Gale.

Her rise is not presented as a simple victory. Sunny must negotiate marriage, motherhood, rivalry, injuries, financial insecurity and devastating personal losses. Her story also reflects a larger historical erasure. Women performed in numerous early rodeo events, including horse racing, trick riding and bronc riding before organizers gradually removed them from competitive events during the Depression.

In the novel’s afterword, Forbes explains that, by the time she encountered rodeo culture as a child, little remained to commemorate the women who had already demonstrated that one’s gender had nothing to do with courage, skill, self-sufficiency or ambition.

Sunny Gale—A Novel was a recipient of numerous honors, including a Will Rogers Silver medallion for excellence in historical fiction. The novel was a finalist for the Feathered Quill Book Awards (women’s fiction category) and a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Awards (historical fiction category). Kirkus Reviews honored the novel with a listing in its Best Indie Books of 2024.

The same refusal to simplify women’s experiences shapes Unbroken, winner of the 2011 WILLA Literary Award for Contemporary Fiction.

The novel introduces Gwen Swan, a ranch wife carrying the exhausting responsibilities of marriage, motherhood, livestock, meals and extended family. Nearby, Meg Braeburn arrives with her son to care for another man’s calves. Although she was raised on a ranch, her employer questions whether a woman can equally perform “a man’s work” and reduces the wage previously promised to her. Meg reminds him that she has a family to support, but her vulnerable circumstances leave her little power to refuse.

As Gwen and Meg begin to confide in one another, their relationship exposes the tension between independence and belonging. Both women are strong, yet neither is invulnerable. Their choices affect children, spouses, parents, neighbors and one another. The novel’s power comes from portraying resilience not as silent endurance, but as the ability to confront painful truths, forgive, and continue living after loss.

The Widow Smalls and Other Stories broadens that exploration through six narratives about people restricted by marriage, family, class, custom and small-town judgment. The collection received the 2015 High Plains Book Award and has been praised for its compassionate characterization and its understanding of individuals struggling against social systems that leave little room for difference.

The title story follows Leah Smalls after the death of her husband, Bud. At first, widowhood leaves her feeling exposed and vulnerable. Throughout her marriage, her domineering husband made all the couple’s decisions. Challenged by the callousness of her husband’s family,

Leah tackles managing the ranch on her own. As she does, her own identity begins at last. Her journey is not merely about surviving bereavement. It is about discovering that the end of one life can become the beginning of another.

In EDEN, Forbes moves from the Wyoming landscape to 1950s North Carolina. Eighteen-year-old Rowen Hart enters a crowded courthouse to observe the murder trial of Franklin White, a powerful member of the community. There Rowen watches a ten-year-old child, Eden Whitney, testify against White, and he marvels at her honesty and audacity.

The courtroom drama becomes the doorway into a wider examination of racial injustice, class privilege, family loyalty, mental illness, childhood grief and the moral education of a sheltered young man. Rowen, whose father has died by suicide and whose mother has withdrawn from life, is forced to confront how little he understands about the people of all races who have always lived and worked around him.

Among the novel’s most influential figures is Adeline, the Black woman who has cared for Rowen’s family. Her insight repeatedly challenges his assumptions about justice, privilege, labor and responsibility. As Rowen’s world changes, relationships that once seemed governed by fixed racial and social roles reveal unexpected depth.

Critical responses have praised EDEN for its portrayal of 1950s small-town North Carolina, its examination of racial and class prejudice and its emotionally complex relationships.

Together, these four books form a deeply human portrait of American life. They show that courage does not always arrive as a dramatic act. Sometimes it is a woman climbing onto a bronc, a mother admitting she needs companionship, a widow tearing down an old structure that defined her, a child speaking in a courtroom or a young man finally seeing beyond the boundaries of his upbringing.

Get the Books

All of Jamie Lisa Forbes’s books are available to purchase directly through her official website.

Visit: jamielisaforbes.com

Explore the collection and order your copies directly from the author’s website.

About the Author

Jamie Lisa Forbes grew up on a ranch in Wyoming’s Little Laramie Valley. She studied English and philosophy at the University of Colorado, lived in Israel and later returned to her family’s ranch for fifteen years. She moved to North Carolina in 1994, graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Law and began practicing law. Her fiction has received numerous honors and awards.

Media Contact:

Jamie Lisa Forbes

Website: jamielisaforbes.com

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