Strawberry Roan Growing Up in the Shadow of Hermits Peak

Strawberry Roan is one woman’s search for meaning in a world of competition, isolation and passion. Her family is loving and supportive but her father’s pressures become her own. She becomes a horsewoman, a breeder and raiser of horses, a kind of equine princess who must always win competitively against girls somehow better equipped than she. In time her life pursuits lead her towards doctoring and she becomes a neurologist with a driving ambition to help people who are on the edge. Sadly, the pressures here are complex and so is her unraveling marriage. She wins only by rugged individualism and the absolute will to win. It’s a triumphant story as well as a dramatic one, laced with lovely descriptions of ranch life and the backwoods beauty of northern New Mexico..

About Judy Beil Vaughan

Judy Vaughan grew up in Northern New Mexico on the family horse ranch, detailed in her New Mexico memoir, Strawberry Roan, published in 2020. She left the family ranch for boarding school in Colorado and then attended Carleton College and the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. She has composed stories since childhood, and began to hone the craft of writing after forty years practicing medicine. She lives in Elk Grove, California, and writes stories featuring horses and the southwest.