Horses, pretty ladies, and handsome men in faded denim and boots: the very stuff of romance. Christian western fiction novels have this with all the challenges of making a life in rugged wide open spaces. The strong heroines of today's literature are right at home in the American west.

The west is as full of adventure today as it was in the days of the pioneers. The mountains are still rugged, the plains endless, and the sky huge and empty. This makes it easy to create believable settings and story lines that frame the characters and create complications. The Christian nature of these stories will be reassuring for those who hesitate to read conventional modern novels; both characters and action will stay within benign limits.

Women like men - a simple fact - and they like horses. This sets the scene. It's not hard to place a woman - young and inexperienced or older and available because of past mistakes or tragedy - in charge of a riding academy specializing in barrel racing and cutting, or trying to save the family ranch in the face of overwhelming odds, or rescuing a horse or two and needing the help of a handsome veterinarian, farrier, or horse breaker. And voila - you can probably think of a thousand complications to these and other scenarios.

One or both of the central figures will have a shrouded past, with mistakes and failures, that contributes to misunderstandings, missed opportunities, and failure to accept the risk of love. This all moves the plot along and keeps readers interested. Although the ending might be predictable, the way there is what makes it fun. Christian belief and principles help everything turn out right.

Furthermore, the Christian framework solves another traditional problem with loving a cowboy. In the standard stories, the strong and silent man might linger for a time, setting female hearts aflutter and arousing hopes in a young girl's heart, but he then rides away - because cowboys need the open range or the open road and can't settle down to a life of domesticity. With a tip of his hat and no backward look, he'll ride off into the Texas sunset, never to be seen again.

A believing cowboy will have the conviction to accept responsibility and settle down with our heroine. She, of course, can and will make up for all the pleasures of the open road. No matter how much we the readers value realistic characters and believable plots, we still want the happy ending.

The ways of the human heart are endlessly interesting, and the story of how someone comes to the Lord and learns to handle life's problems with God's help is always fascinating. This extra dimension adds to the story, especially when a skilled writer creates vital and believable characters and develops a clever, twisted plot. Who cares if the end is predictable, if the journey to get there is engrossing?

A man, a woman, the Lord, and the wide open spaces. It doesn't get much better than this.