Don't Fence Me In: A Romance of the New West

B.J. Busch is associate librarian of academic and information services
at the University of Alberta.

Some very weird things happen in this novel, but the events themselves
can hardly hold a candle to the interesting characters. First, there is
the hero, Doc Allen, an over–40 rodeo clown whose career has seen
better days, but not many. Doc, a bit of a psychic, falls in love, sight
unseen, with a woman dressed as Ralph the Dog at a Calgary Stampeders’
football game. As Doc pursues his romantic interest in Ralph (who is the
girlfriend of the worst defensive back ever), the reader is introduced
to some memorable characters: Doc’s father, members of a biker gang
(who just want to play baseball), and an about-to-be-foreclosed rancher,
whose spread is rescued by the bikers in a scene reminiscent of the
revolt against scheming bankers in the Dirty Thirties. Poulsen has a
real knack for dialogue, and his characters’ one-liners are so perfect
one wants to file them away for future use. This wacky, fun-to-read
novel has great potential as a movie script.