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People Who Define the Western Way
Broadway Cowgirl
A Horse Tale
Broadway Cowgirl
Betty Buckley Gets Back to the Ranch
by Joanna Nasar
Growing up in Ft. Worth,
Texas, a young Betty Lynn
Buckley dreamed of making it
big on Broadway. But in her
heart, she promised herself
that after finding success she
would return home and buy a
ranch for her favorite horse,
Black Bucket. What Buckley
couldn’t have foreseen is just
how bright her star would
shine, and how long the road
back to Texas would be.
Buckley’s career took off in
1969 with her Broadway
debut as Martha Jefferson in
1776. From there she went on
to perform in Sunset
Boulevard, The Mystery of
Edwin Drood, the motion picture
Carrie, and numerous
other plays, movies, and television
shows. In 1983, she won
a Tony Award for best-featured
actress in a musical for
her role in Cats. But even
while living in New York for all
those years, she maintained
her National Cutting Horse
Association membership and
paid for the upkeep of her
beloved horse.
“I am extremely grateful to
be a singer and actor, but there
is just this incredible love I
have for horse, animals, and
the land. I needed to live that
out,” she says over the phone
from her ranch, a 35-acre
spread in Texas with two houses,
a barn, and a horse pen.
After the events of Sept. 11,
2001, Buckley decided that it
was time to finally fulfill her
ranching dream. She began by
enlisting the help of trainer Bill
Freeman and purchasing her
first cutting horse, Purple
Badger. She fell in love with the
sport and the horse so much so
that she moved back to Texas
full-time at the age of 55.
She’s still involved with a
number of projects—including
the release of her new jazzinspired
CD, Quintessence; a
starring role in director M.
Night Shyamalan’s recent film
The Happening; and an HBO
mini series titled The Pacific.
A Horse Tale - top
Minnesota Teen Publishes her First Novel
by Joanna Nasar
 Chelsea Christman is
an energetic, hopeful,
horse-obsessed teenager who
lives with her parents and
younger brother on a farm in
Minnesota. It’s the kind of
place where the front porch
opens up to countryside, and
where a young girl can stand
on that porch and tempt
neighbors’ horses to visit with
an outstretched carrot and
soft calls of ‘come here horsey,
come here horsey.’
This bucolic scene might
not seem extraordinary in
some parts of the country—
commonplace even—except
for that this otherwise average
15-year-old girl with a passion
for horses and writing is a published
novelist.
When she was just 12-yearsold,
Christman filled several
notebooks with a hand-written
story during her summer
vacation.
“I really I wanted to get it
finished before school started
because than you have all
this homework and there
isn’t much time for writing,”
she says.
Her parents, Sarah and Allan,
didn’t even know about the
project until she asked them to
read her work. Impressed by
her writing, they agreed to help
her get it published.
It took awhile, but one
evening she got a call from
Richard Tate, founder of Tate
Publishing, who told her that
her novel, White Lightning,
would be published. She was 13.
“It was surreal,” she says of
the news. “I started jumping
up and down with joy, holding
in a scream because it was just
an unforgettable moment.”
White Lightning is an
adventure story about a cowgirl
named Sonora who tames
a wild colt. The main message
of the book is to stay determined
and shoot for your
dreams, Christman says.
Christman has already completed
a sequel titled White
Lightning Races.
“I have always got ideas
going,” she says.
For more information about
White Lightning, go to www.tatepublishing.com.
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