The Reluctant Cowgirl

The Reluctant Cowgirl is a 2009 Christian romance novel written by Arkansas novelist Christine Lynxwiler and published by Barbour Publishing. It is the first installment of the McCord Sister Romance series, followed by Cowgirl at Heart (2010). The novel is set in the fictionalized community of Shady Grove in northeastern Arkansas, which is also the setting for Lynxwiler’s Pinky Promise Sisterhood series (Promise Me Always and Along Came a Cowboy), and this novel features some of the same characters in smaller roles.

Crystal McCord is wrapping up her last performance of an off-Broadway play, Making a Splash, in New York City when her brother Aaron back in Arkansas calls for a family meeting. She intends not to return, but after the play ends, she skips the after-party and goes home. There, she finds her boyfriend, Brad, having sex with her roommate, Sabra, which leads her to fly back to Arkansas that night.

Aaron and his wife, Bree, have the chance to do some mission work in Chicago but are worried how this will affect the McCord parents, Jonathan and Lynda, who have a ranch outside Shady Grove and have already scheduled a combination mission trip and anniversary vacation to South America. Therefore, somebody needs to be home to take care of the ranch, and Crystal reluctantly volunteers for the job. But she finds living at the family house painful, reminding her of her twin sister Cami, who was killed in an accident when she was eighteen; they had planned to become actresses on Broadway together.

Helping Crystal will be Jeremy Buchanan, who owns the neighboring ranch. As Crystal and Jeremy work together on the farm, they grow closer, but Crystal still plans to decamp for New York when her parents return. However, Jeremy has been preoccupied with the search for his daughter, six-year-old Beka, now missing for more than a year, ever since his ex-wife, Lindsey, disappeared with her.

He has hired a private detective, Sam, for the effort, and one day Sam calls with news that Lindsey has been found at a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, following a drug overdose. But Lindsey, already unconscious, soon dies, and Beka’s whereabouts remain a mystery. Crystal organizes a group of church members and others to travel to Memphis and post flyers and knock on doors to try to find Beka. She also arranges for Jeremy to be interviewed by Channel Six, which results in two women, Amanda and Michelle, bringing Beka to Jeremy’s house in Shady Grove. Lindsey had often left Beka in their care after Amanda answered an advertisement for a babysitter, and the two had no idea the girl had been kidnapped.

At the end of the day that Beka was found, Crystal goes into the room she once shared with her sister, unchanged since Cami’s death, including the “well-worn Bible” placed precisely “where she’d left it seven years ago.” She picks it up and starts to read when her agent, Mia, calls with news that she has scored a private audition for a supporting role in a Broadway play. She flies out the next day for a short stay, but the audition goes poorly, and she is increasingly drawn to life back in Arkansas.

When Mia next calls with the offer of a private audition for an off-Broadway production, she turns her agent down. She also later faces her own memories and starts to clean out the room she and Cami had shared. Her agent later calls back with an audition for a Broadway supporting role, and Crystal flies to New York for it. When she arrives back in Arkansas for her parents’ welcome home party, Mia calls with news that she landed the part. Crystal returns to New York, but she once again finds herself longing for home, and she finally shows up at Jeremy’s ranch unannounced, with news that she has come home for good.

Publishers Weekly described the book as “inspirational romance over easy,” noting that while the main character exhibited only “a smidgen of depth,” the dialogue flowed “easily and wittily, almost screenplay-like.”

For additional information:
Lynxwiler, Christine. The Reluctant Cowgirl. Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour Publishing, Inc., 2009.

Review of The Reluctant Cowgirl. Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781602601505 (accessed September 27, 2024).

Staff of the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas