Holding On for Dear Life

Intense action meets heavy emotion on the Arizona junior rodeo circuit in this captivating novel by Bowling (The Beat I Drum). Thirteen-year-old Canyon Cress credits his parents with instilling in him a love for bull riding and fiddle playing. After Canyon’s musician mother is killed by a drunk driver, though, everything about the youth’s life turns upside down. When Canyon’s athlete father uses whiskey to cope with his grief, the teen must navigate the politics of an elite bull riding competition on his own. Though Canyon’s maternal grandmother looks after him and his younger sister Josie in Dad’s stead, Canyon insists on bearing the brunt of the childcare responsibilities, hoping to reignite his father’s once affectionate nature. In the meantime, participating in his beloved adrenaline-fueled sport helps distract Canyon from his own grief, and making music with his fiddle assists in managing the persistent headaches, nausea, and pain caused by his cumulative bull riding injuries (“I imagine the notes rising off my fiddle... I breathe them into my body, where they flow in my bloodstream and find all the cracks”). Deploying melodic prose that sings with the trademark melancholy and yearning of a country song, Bowling crafts a distinctive, nuanced protagonist in Canyon, whose gentle first-person POV guides readers to an emotionally satisfying resolution. The Cress family cues as white. Ages 8–12. Agent: Shannon Hassan, Marsal Lyon Literary. (Oct.)