Bittersweet Tale of 2 Sisters Reunited Back on the Ranch

Watch your back, Larry McMurtry. There’s another cowpoke in town who, for a good while now, has been steadily fixing to pick up where you left off. Her name’s Jo-Ann Mapson and she’s getting pretty fast on the draw. Trouble-ridden romance, as hurtful and risky as a green horse, is the subject Mapson has corralled.

“The Wilder Sisters,” her newest novel, travels along the same fence line as her other books. It’s as bittersweet as “Hank and Chloe” (and less enigmatic than the sequel, “Loving Chloe”), a little less soulful than “Blue Rodeo,” and perhaps as equally spunky as her Orange County western, “Shadow Ranch.” Mapson’s tale of two sisters raised on a horse ranch in northern New Mexico unfolds as unhurriedly as a Hank Williams ballad and pulls you into its catchy, sometimes raw and sexy, story with ease.

*

Rose and Lily Wilder couldn’t be more different, even though both have sprung from the earthy, proud and aristocratic Wilder and Martinez clans. Like the culturally mixed Land of Enchantment, the women come from a family claiming Indian, Spanish and Anglo blood. Both grew up equally tough ranch girls, responsible, roping and riding, but as adults tended toward very different temperaments.

Lily, at 35, is one of those people who must win every argument. She has left the confines of her small-town upbringing to resettle in Southern California, where she pulls in $150,000 a year selling high-tech medical equipment, drives a Lexus and owns an expensive, minuscule condo. She’s had many boyfriends, but love has eluded her. Hoping to impress one of her dates, she prepares the New Mexican specialty posole. He freaks. “Hey, don’t make that Mexican pig dish again, por favor?” She throws him out and settles for the loving attentions of Buddy Guy, her Queensland heeler.

Back in New Mexico, we meet Rose, an expert horsewoman. At 40, she has been widowed and is doing office and tax work for Austin Donavan, a veterinarian and horseman himself. Rose has fallen deeply in love with Austin, a tall, bespectacled, wiry alcoholic still fixated on Leah, his bad-news ex-wife. Doormat might be a good way to describe Rose, at least according to the fractious Lily, who heads to New Mexico in need of a break.

At Rancho Costa Plente, the Wilder place, the sisters, who haven’t spoken to one another for five years, meet up unexpectedly. In town, Lily runs into her old flame, Tres Quintero. Back at the ranch, Shep, the aging cowboy and hand who has been like a second father to Rose and Lily, has grown noticeably thinner, is riding with a sheepskin pad and needs a mounting block, where before he never even required a leg up.

Pop Wilder, father and rancher, remains, alas, a remote stick figure. There’s not much for him to do in this story, except show his love for his girls. And he appears oddly unconcerned about who will take over the horse-ranching operation down the line.

*

Then there’s Mami, Poppy Martinez Wilder, the glamorous 62-year-old mother of Rose and Lily, who flies her own plane. She’s thinner, has smaller feet, more beautiful skin, more Indian jewelry and friends in high places than her daughters ever will. Like Lily, she has a wild streak, and like Rose, she believes in the power of New Mexico’s unique spiritual culture that accommodates ritualistic Catholicism, Native American shamanism and Spanish folk ways of healing.

Mami is loving and always ready to dispense advice. But so what? We want to know more about this most fascinating of the Wilder women. We only hear about her expansive ego and cheatin’ heart. Mapson sets up the story of two sisters and the mother they cannot compete against, yet moves her plot in another direction altogether. Perhaps the story of Poppy Martinez will be the subject of a future Mapson novel.

Is this sexy, witty story a romance? You betcha. If you love horses, dogs, cowboys and Western lore, this book is for you. And it will be hard to fight back the tears at the scene of a spare cowboy funeral, where in the snowy air, Pop Wilder quietly speaks the following verse: “Your foot’s in the stirrup, your pony won’t stand, goodbye, old partner, you’re leaving Cheyenne.”