"Stilettos to Stetsons" is a modern day true romance story with a twist. Anyone who enjoys a good love story, intertwined with descriptions of modern day western culture and ranch life will find this book absorbing. This is a fascinating and compelling true story that Janice has written about the path that her life took beginning on one cold January afternoon in Cornwall, England, when she suddenly and unexpectedly became a widow. The story ends some seven years later by which time she was now living in Texas and was the wife of a cattle rancher. She describes the emotions and experience of being suddenly widowed with depth and passion. As her story evolves, she is able to give a British woman's take about life on a Texas cattle ranch, describing the funny, frightening and bewildering incidents that occured to her.
The story begins on the day that she came home to find her husband a local sporting celebrity, lying dead on the floor. It was a bizarre day and she describes the occurences and emotions that surround that time and the ensuing days with sensitivity and realism. Within a few days, she had discovered devastating secrets about her husband and realised that she had been married to a man for many years, whom she did not really know at all.
As the months went by, she pieced back together her shattered life and eventually felt that she was ready to start another relationship. Her encounters with would-be suitors proved to be fairly disastrous as it seemed that all the men who tried to enter her life either had nothing in common with her or had ulterior motives. Her best interests were certainly not at the top of their agendas.
Thoroughly disheartened, she accepted the fact that now in her mid-fifties, she would most likely end up as a lonely little old lady. That was when she went to visit friends who lived in Las Vegas, and where one night, while sitting a bar in a hotel, she met a Texas cowboy. She had a feeling that this stranger in a Stetson was about to become highly significant to her.
It only took one brief stay with that cowboy on his cattle ranch in Texas for them both to realise that they were deeply in love with each other. With a passion that is usually reserved for young love, they knew that they wanted to be together, despite the little matter of six thousand miles and the huge cultural divide between them.
Janice made the momentous decision to give up her job, her house, her friends, and a fairly comfortable but unfullfilled life in Cornwall in order to start a new life with her cowboy.
She knew that the transition was not going to be easy,and describes with passion and humour how she endured the searing heat of the Texas summers and the extremes of the Southern Plains weather. She recounts her experiences with the indigenous Texas wildlife and describes the huge cultural differences that she had to experience. She quickly discovered that roping steers and outrunning stampedes from horseback became part of her everyday life as the wife of a Texas cattle rancher.In short, she describes how a stilettos wearing school teacher from rural England became a fully fledged Stetson wearing Texas cowgirl.
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