The Pioneer Woman

March 14, 2011
Drummond, a blogger and best-selling author of The Pioneer Woman Cooks, turns her popular blog chronicling her improbable city-girl-meets-rugged-cowboy saga into an affecting new memoir. Drummond deftly describes what happens when life takes a U-turn, taking readers from her chaste but steamy courtship with "Marlboro Man," to their subsequent wedding and Australian honeymoon, and into the first year of their marriage where the two decamped to Marlboro Man's isolated ranch (Drummond had been en route to a new life in Chicago when she met him). What emerges is a charming and romantic yet realistic tale of the forces that can test a new relationshipâno matter how good it is. She presents a sometimes riotously funny, always strikingly real tale of love and life. Drummond is intensely likable and writes with the facile confidence of one who clearly knows herself well. Plenty of surprises lie along the way, such as her parents' divorce and an immediate pregnancy following the nuptials. She's sure to have readers in tears and in stitches as they share her adventure. In a word: delightful. Includes several recipes.

January 15, 2011

Bestselling cookbook author Drummond (The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl, 2009) tells the tale of falling in love with an Oklahoma cowboy.

When she was in her mid-20s, the author left California, and a four-year relationship, seeking a new life in Chicago, with a quick stop on the way at her childhood home in Oklahoma. There her plans changed considerably, as she met a drop-dead gorgeous, steely cowboy who became known as Marlboro Man. She fell hard, enamored with his smoky voice, blue eyes and disarming chuckle, which "could quiet stormy waters. Bring about world peace." Marlboro Man also turned out to be an admirable guy—grounded, hardworking, chivalrous, honest and open. Drummond, too, is a sweet character, who has written this love song from what feel like fleshed-out blog notes: fresh, intimate, minute and unselfconscious. The author's gushing prose often becomes cloying and soporific—"I was in a black hole, a vortex of romance...I was floating on vapors. One kiss, and I was transported"—but she tempers it with cringingly hilarious descriptions of her sweat-drenched panic episodes when she first met his family and again at her wedding, and she writes artfully of the tall grass prairie and other natural wonders on the plains. The gloom cast by her parents' marital breakup could have served as a counterpoint to her bliss, but Drummond lets it slip away by never fully exploring their circumstances.

A sometimes enjoyable love story hampered by treacly prose and syrupy sentiment.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 15, 2011
Popular blogger and cookbook author Drummond shares the story of her courtship and marriage to her husband, whom she refers to as Marlboro Man. Though Drummond grew up in Oklahoma, she never imagined shed end up there for good. After four years of college in Los Angeles, Drummond was only making a pit stop home before moving to Chicago. A chance encounter with a devastatingly masculine cowboy in a local bar changes everything. Though several months elapse before Marlboro Man calls her, the spark between them ignites as soon as they start dating. A rancher with deep roots in the land he works, Marlboro Man isnt going anywhere, which means Drummond has to decide whether, to be with him, shes willing to give up her dream of moving to Chicago. By the time Marlboro Man proposes, the decision is made, and Drummond prepares to marry the love of her life and discover what being a ranchers wife will entail. Charming and bright, Drummonds story will be an inspiration to those who despair of finding old-fashioned, lasting love.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)