Roped

Thirteen-year-old Crissy Crosby chases a dream to live up to her parents’ rodeo legacy. But the rodeo championship is two months away and problems beyond her ability to solve stack and teeter like a game of Tumbling-Towers. Meanwhile rival Jodie Lea and her father, Ed Fairgate, contrive to swipe the silver buckles from Crissy’s grasp any way they can. Prejudice, anger, and dark secrets simmer in a pot of family feuds destined to boil over in a tragic nightmare at the rodeo. Will Crissy develop courage and faith to overcome the consequences of her temper? Will her dreams of buckles and titles become reality? Or will the character-building adversities of her life quash her dreams forever?

“No doubt Diane Gates is a writer’s writer! In her newest book, Roped her readers will soon fall in love with Crissy Crosby, a high-spirited, headstrong young woman who is forced to learn some very important life lessons as she struggles to overcome and survive some very difficult, painful and unexpected challenges in her young life. Roped is creatively written as both an exciting read as well as a ‘words-on-teaching-tool’ for her readers through the challenges and triumphs of this young woman as she faces heartache and heartbreak, trials and tribulations, triumphs and terror, love and forgiveness and the ever-constant thorn in her side, Miss Jodie Lea Fairgate, the bully of all bullies. DiAne Gates uses Crissy’s family, especially the wisdom of her mother, to guide her babe through her hard lesson-learning times. ‘Sometimes our problems are our teachers. Then God gives us a test to show us whether we’ve passed. It takes some of us longer.’ As both writer and former publisher, it is with great joy I commend this book to you. My only regret is that now I must wait for the sequel, Twisted.”