Cowboy Code
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Release Date: August 8, 2019
Synopsis
At the end of World War II, three women come together in a southwest Virginia mill town to face racism, homophobia, and violence. Fourteen-year-old Bobbie Grey’s father has been killed in an explosion at the paper mill and, enthralled with Gene Autry movies, she uses the star’s Cowboy Code as her moral guide for entering the confusing and uninviting adult world. Bobbie has a crush on Covey, a boxer who lives in the African settlement. When Phoenix moves in with the Grey family, Bobbie discovers a secret connection between Phoenix and Covey that culminates in KKK violence. A handsome sailor on leave creates tension among the women with secrets of his own. Ultimately Bobbie learns the true essence of love is letting go.
Praise
"Readers will adore sharing Bobbie's secrets and observations; she feels like a real friend, capable and determined, and full of love."
–Julie Chibbaro, author of Redemption
"Louella Bryant's Cowboy Code is a fine and moving book. It shares elements with the very best YA novels I taught in a long career as an English teacher: clear and sometimes arrestingly beautiful writing; significant themes, handled with grace and clarity; engaging characters who are never stereotyped or caricatured; and a story arc that is compelling, with each scene contributing to the development of the novel's central issues, reaching a deeply satisfying conclusion. The voice of the narrator, fourteen-year-old Bobbie, rings true and original, and pulled me into the preoccupations, anxieties, growing understanding, and ultimately wisdom of this young teenager in a small town in Virginia as she wrestles with a growing awareness of the people and culture that make up the fabric of her life. To try to catalogue the situations and conditions Bobbie faces would be to reduce this compassionate and wise novel to a list of "issues," but it goes far beyond "timely" to develop a timeless story of a young girl's difficult, determined path to maturity and understanding."
–Cate Haus, Amazon review
"COWBOY CODE is set in the late 1940s (USA); it is a straight-laced time of rigid societal judgments and fears. Although today’s world purports to be more accepting, it is still grappling with the same prejudices in COWBOY CODE. The novel begins with narrator fourteen-year-old Bobbie, who loses her father in an explosion at the paper mill. In moving forward without a father, the breadwinner of the family, situations arise that awaken Bobbie to realizations about the power and mystery regarding money, feminism, lesbianism, domestic abuse, and racism. Bobbie measures people in her life by Gene Autry’s Cowboy Code—and some people just don’t measure up. This book is a satisfying, insightful, read."
–Vickie Weaver, author of Billie Girl
"Cowboy Code draws you right in with vivid imagery and compelling characters. The post-WWII life of the town of Pine Cliff comes alive, along with the people in it. This book is a loving tribute to southern culture, and at the same time a sad reminiscence of the difficulty of living within that culture. I loved it!"
–Tina Scharf, Amazon review
"The author might be getting sick of comparisons to To Kill a Mockingbird, but that's where reading this book always takes me. A similar setting and as poignant and heart-renderingly real as the Harper Lee classic.
–Jim Defilippi, author of Forty Steps to Old Sparky
Excerpt
Reverend Singer is admonishing the congregation to dwell on the virtuous qualities of the deceased instead of his transgressions. I know Daddy was no saint. Once a car woke me late in the night. Out the window I saw a lady with bleached blonde hair behind the wheel. He got out, eyes grazing the house as if hoping Momma wasn’t watching. I never heard them argue about the blonde lady. Either Momma was afraid he’d leave us penniless or she truly loved him. I know I did.
When I was eleven, Daddy gave me money for matinees at the Visulite. I watched Back in the Saddle three times before he told me, “I believe I’m wasting my money on you, Bobbie Marlene—you’ve memorized all of Gene Autry’s lines.” After that we started listening to “Melody Ranch,” the radio show where Gene Autry recited his cowboy code of morals. Law number one says that a cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage. But the boiler that blew up in my father’s face at the Blue Ridge Pulp and Paper Mill is no cowboy.
When the service ends, Reverend Singer rushes to the back of the chapel to shake hands with the mourners as they leave, but Momma posts herself beside the casket. Nandaddy comes up the aisle and stops next to me.
“You ready, girl?” he says. “We’ll wait for your mother in the car. She needs a few minutes.”
“I’m staying.”
He frowns at me. “Then we’ll be outside when you’re ready.”
The undertaker is about to roll the casket away, and I go up and stand beside Momma.
“I want to see my husband,” she says.
“That’s not a good idea, Mrs. Grey,” he says. “It was a bad accident.” “Please open the casket, Mr. Underwood,” I tell him. “If you don’t,
Momma will open it herself.”
I prefer to remember my father as he was, Bogart-handsome, the way he could wink with his right eye but not his left, the laugh that rumbled up from his belly. But Momma needs me and I will look death in the face with her, even if what I see haunts me forever.
When Mr. Underwood lifts the lid, the silk inside rustles. Surrounded by puffs of satin lies a body that has a human form wearing a white shirt and a blue striped tie in a Windsor knot. Above the knot is an overripe watermelon, oddly shaped, as if it has not had sufficient space to grow. The rind is black and green and cracked over moist fruit. Where the mouth should be is a crooked seam, lips wrinkled inward like a toothless old man’s and two rotten spots for eyes. Someone has made a mistake—this is not my father.
The hands are folded across the stomach like charcoaled chicken wings, the left over the right. On the ring finger is a plain band of gold, a ring that could belong to any man. It seems strange, though, that the fingernails are as pink as a baby’s bottom, except for the right hand. The nails of three fingers are black, as if they were caught under the sash of a window.
I feel as if a rag has been stuffed down my throat. My heart thrashes and I want to be standing outside with Covey pretending it’s someone else’s father lying cold and mangled in the crude box.
When I’m able to choke out the lump in my throat, my breath comes with a torrent of spit and tears. Between sobs, I give voice to a single word— “Daddy.”
