2026 Big Sky Award Finalist

BE A MAN: Raised in the Shadow of Cowboys

Available August 21, 2026
Official release September 1, 2026

BE A MAN: Raised in the Shadow of Cowboys is a memoir with a specific focus on what it means to grow up in the West as a male. Russell Rowland is a fourth generation Montanan whose mother grew up on a cattle ranch in Southeastern Montana. In BE A MAN, Rowland explores how his upbringing and those of his parents shaped their family in terms of how to approach emotional issues like death, alcoholism, domestic violence, and general failure. Rowland also explores how the media and the history of the West create a dynamic that is hard to escape when you absorb certain mixed messages about what it means to be a man. How to treat women, how to deal with conflict, and how to find your own way through the complicated world of success and failure.

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“Savvy author and journalist Russell Rowland’s revealing memoir BE A MAN belongs on the shelf of anyone of any gender who cares about the culture of “the West” and how that now impacts Americans everywhere. Rowland reveals truths and terrors behind the myths Americans are fed by movies and TV, myths and consequences that have impacted our lives in this 21st Century. This is a personal as well as a political and cultural exposure of how we all ended up where we are now, all told with Rowland’s honest, savvy, critical yet loving eye.”

James Grady, Montana native & creator of movie and TV’s CONDOR spy sagas.

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