When twenty-eight-year-old Laurie Wagner hired on at the O Bar Y Ranch in western Wyoming, she was a novice to ranching life but no stranger to isolated locations. As revealed in her celebrated memoir When I Came West, Laurie had already spent years living in a rustic cabin in the Montana wilderness with a troubled Vietnam veteran. Rough Breaks recounts the next chapter in her life, beginning with her painful break from Bill Atkinson, and unfolding into a modern-day saga of life on a remote cattle ranch.

Written in the author's trademark lyrical style, Rough Breaks...