Cowboys, Yogis, and One-Legged Ski Bums: The Extraordinary Lives of Ordinary Coloradans

Each of the stories contained in Don Morreale's Cowboys, Yogis, and One-Legged Ski Bums represents a pivotal moment in the life of an ordinary Coloradan; the prisoner who receives a pardon on the last day of Bill Clinton's presidency, and who then goes on to found a drug counseling center for at-risk youth; the Long Island teenager who loses his leg in a motorcycle accident, but who regains a sense of wholeness by learning to ski in the Colorado Rockies; the Buddhist nun who survives a bear attack and discovers the hidden power of meditation.

But this book is about more than the triumph of ordinary people over difficult circumstances. It's also about how they find out who they are and what it is they're meant to be doing with their lives; the standup comic who becomes a minister, and who begins offering services in local taverns for those who wouldn't otherwise be caught dead in church; the adoptive mother of two Russian kids who discovers a whole new way of working with troubled adoptees; the burned-out stockbroker who finds fulfillment as a "grunt guy" mowing lawns for a living.

In these brief biographical sketches (each story averages around 650 words and can be read in under five minutes), Morreale uncovers a surprising diversity, creativity, and zest for living among his fellow Coloradans. Colorado, he learns, really is a place where people come to find out who they are, or better yet, who they were meant to be.