Writing Her Own Sequel

BOULDER, Colo.

Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Carmel Zucker for The New York Times

Leap of Faith Ms. Davidson had no previous connection to Boulder, Colo., but after a life coach told her to “lean into” her feelings, she sold her home in Santa Monica and bought a nine-room house in the foothills of the Rockies.

IF you can't get a meeting with the networks after years of writing for a hit show, and your TV agent fires you and the cowboy lover 10 years your junior has up and left with not even a, "Well, Toots, it looks like our work here is done" - if, finally, you are no longer a voice of the '60s, but marooned in your 60s, you could do worse than Sara Davidson.

Unable to get work in Los Angeles despite a successful career as a television writer and journalist, she pulled up stakes and moved to Boulder, where she knew no one, to find a new life.

Her house, in the foothills of the Rockies, cost .3 million - a nice piece of change to put down when the subject of your new book is your life's uncertainty. She has a glass-walled office, outside of which the foxes walk by so close she can see the markings on their heads, and a hot tub on the veranda. But why did Ms. Davidson, who lives alone, her two children grown, need a nine-room house?

"Yeah, it's way too big," says Ms. Davidson, a tall, slim woman in jeans and a purple T-shirt, who even this side of the Rockies exudes the good-hair vibe of a successful network writer. "Three of the rooms are closed, I never go into them. I live in the office and bedroom and visit the kitchen. I'd looked for six months, I wanted a 2,000-square-foot house, one bedroom to sleep in and one to work, but I couldn't find one."

Here is the nice thing about being a writer: If you find yourself in a miserable situation, you can come up with a snazzy tag for it and turn it into a book. Ms. Davidson, who made her name with the 1977 novel "Loose Change," about three women of the '60s coming of age, has now written "Leap! What Will We Do With the Rest of Our Lives?" It focuses on a time in life that Ms. Davidson has christened the Narrows, when the old professional and personal identities have been stripped away and one is left in the dark. Ms. Davidson, a former writer and producer of "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," chronicles not only her own struggles, but also those of other successful boomers who have found themselves sidelined.

People who are forced out of jobs in their 50s and never find new ones, or who can't afford health insurance, are not discussed. This is a book, Ms. Davidson says, about creative and spiritual fulfillment. She writes of Carly Simon - ignored by her record label, unable to afford her Central Park West apartment when the rent tripled - who went off, recorded on her own and ended up back on the charts.

An inspirational tale, but given that Ms. Simon's rent went up from an apparently affordable ,000 to ,000 and her retreat was a second home in Martha's Vineyard, who's going to be able to relate?

"Carly Simon had a serious cancer, she and her husband were breaking up," Ms. Davidson says. "Mostly it's being dropped by her record company and being told she's not commercial. There aren't that many celebrities in the book, but there are some. The reason is that we have this feeling that the beautiful and rich and successful and someone as wonderful as Carly Simon doesn't have to go through what the rest of us have to go through. But it happens, no matter how much money you have. "

Ms. Davidson, if not technically a boomer at 64, was certainly a voice of the boomer generation. The daughter of a radio repairman in Los Angeles, she graduated from Berkeley and was covering social and political events for Harper's, Rolling Stone and Life by her late 20s. When her first marriage, to the radio host Jonathan Schwartz, ended in divorce, she did not seek alimony - she was an independent '60s woman, after all. "Loose Change," which was in part autobiographical, was made into an NBC miniseries. The paperback rights sold for 0,000 in 1977. She was 34.

Ms. Davidson's life wasn't charmed. There were books that were flops and books that were best sellers; a second marriage, which produced a son and a daughter, now 25 and 22; a second divorce. But it was still the conventional Hollywood good life: the architect-designed house in Santa Monica; the Mercedes ML320; the teenage daughter throwing a fit when Ms. Davidson got her eyes done; the spiritual coaches and quests.

There was also the unconventional aspect: the cowboy lover who lived in Arizona, paycheck to paycheck, and had never heard of Anne Frank. His name was Richard, but in her books she calls him Zack. He worked in feed lots and did rawhide braiding. One of the reasons she thinks it worked for her, Ms. Davidson says, is that he was a creative person, too. He was determined to be the best rawhide braider in the world; when she struggled with a piece of writing, he understood.

Ms. Davidson wrote a book about that part of her life, too, a novel called "Cowboy." The relationship lasted seven years and was, she says, the most emotionally and physically fulfilling one of her life. Read the section of "Leap" in which she describes a weekend at a Tantric sex workshop (page 128, if you're pressed for time), and you'll understand why.

Then in 2000, when she was 57, it was all over.

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