By J.P.S. Brown
BORN INTO A FAMILY OF CATTLEMEN on the southern Arizona border at the beginning of the Great Depression. Mikey Summers is raised by people who are wilder than the animals under their care. Maggie, his mother, is quick to love, but also quick to fight, loves contention as much as peace, likes to run and play, but is decent with a fine moral sense. She does hard work as though tapping for a dance, but can be as mean and ill-tempered as she is decent and good.
Paul Summers, his father, loves to cowboy, ride broncs, get drunk with Maggie's brothers, be Maggie's husband as long as it is fun, but tries not to get serious about any of it. When Maggie reminds him that he will have to stop running and playing and be responsible, he only grins.
As his parents and uncles and their families work and play hard to keep their world from dying of drought, disease, and the Depression, Mikey revels in its fathers, mothers, horses, dirt, dogs, cows, and trees and learns that he must fight his own battles to keep it.
Based on J.P.S. Brown's own experiences growing up and ranching in Mexico and Arizona, The World in Pancho's Eye offers an honest and heartfelt portrayal of the life of working cowboys and the love they and their families have for the job.
J.P.S. Brown is a cattleman and fiction writer. He lives and works in Patagonia, Arizona.
ACCLAIM
"The World in Pancho's Eye is a wonderful coming-of-age story set in the Depression-era southwest. The tale of Mikey Summers' struggles to win love from his quick-tempered mother and his reckless, feckless, hard-drinking cowboy father is tender, sometimes humorous, sometimes heart-breaking, but never sentimental. His baptism into the cowboy's way of life on cattle drives from Mexico to Arizona is the stuff of grand American myth, as good as anything Larry McMurtry ever wrote. J.P.S. Brown writes with grace, wit and an understanding of the heart that make his novel transcend its time and place."
Philip Caputo, Pulitzer Prize winning Author/Reporter, March 2008
ACCLAIM
His October, 2008 novel
The World In Pancho's Eye "Joe Brown writes about the growing up years of Mikey, a boy fathered by a hard-living, often irresponsible and absent cowboy who swings his rope on the great borderland ranches of Mexico and southern Arizona. This book tells a gritty and sometimes sad story in language that is seldom found outside the realm of fine literature. Joe Brown is more than an author. He is a world-class writer of the first order."
-Cowboy Magazine, March, 2008
