Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo

A Novel

By: Boris Fishman

Narrated by: Boris Fishman

The author of the critically admired, award-winning A Replacement Life turns to a different kind of story—an evocative, nuanced portrait of marriage and family, a woman reckoning with what she’s given up to make both work, and the universal question of how we reconcile who we are and whom the world wants us to be.

Maya Shulman and Alex Rubin met in 1992, when she was a Ukrainian exchange student with “a devil in [her] head” about becoming a chef instead of a medical worker, and he the coddled son of Russian immigrants wanting to toe the water of a less predictable life.

Twenty years later, Maya Rubin is a medical worker in suburban New Jersey, and Alex his father’s second in the family business. The great dislocation of their lives is their eight-year-old son Max—adopted from two teenagers in Montana despite Alex’s view that “adopted children are second-class.”

At once a salvation and a mystery to his parents—with whom Max’s biological mother left the child with the cryptic exhortation “don’t let my baby do rodeo”—Max suddenly turns feral, consorting with wild animals, eating grass, and running away to sit face down in a river.

Searching for answers, Maya convinces Alex to embark on a cross-country trip to Montana to track down Max’s birth parents—the first drive west of New Jersey of their American lives. But it’s Maya who’s illuminated by the journey, her own erstwhile wildness summoned for a reckoning by the unsparing landscape, with seismic consequences for herself and her family.

Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo is a novel about the mystery of inheritance and what exactly it means to belong.

Nearly ruined by Author reading his own book.

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I would not recommend this audio book because the reading was nearly intolerable. I don't know why so many writers insist on reading their own works. They're rarely good at it. Writing is one thing, reading as performance is another thing entirely. Mr. Fishman reads the prose as if he's reading scripture, with a singsong approach that is both boring and irritating. I think this was an rather intriguing book, but I'm really not sure. The narration stood in the way.

Great narration and great story

I really like Boris Fishman's novels and enjoyed his reading of this book. He has a pleasant voice, conveys the tone of the characters, and crucially - pronounces correctly all the Russian words and names :)
Really enjoyed the story. It was gripping and unexpected, with many twists and turns. The characters are well drawn, and their inner worlds are compelling and believable. It's great to have a story with an unconventional female character at it's center. Highly recommended!

East meets West, then heads East.

Well crafted story about an extended family. There's only one three dimensional character though. The rest seem to be two dimensional foils. No spoilers here. Listen to a sample and decide.

such a terrible reader it's not even worth it

Don't let authors read their books. They are not actors. I have no idea if this is a good book because the read is so boring and thin and annoying. Writers should write and actors should act. To take the cheap way out and have a writer read his own book was a very bad decision. He could not be worse. Again, it might be a good book, but who wants to stick around and find out with a read like this