Contributing Editor
FICTION
Chad Cartwright
Shock
Paperback, 978-0-9975-4710-8, 2016; ebook 978-0-9975-4712-2, 2017
Life can knock us down hard and leave us writhing in defeat and self-pity. But, often, a wise relative, friend or mentor may help us stand up again and get back to normal living.
But what if we get slammed down painfully a second time, and this time no one is around to help us? Can we find the inner strengths we need to pull ourselves up and move forward?
These are important themes in Shock, an intriguing novel by Lubbock author Chad Cartwright. Written mostly in the form of a personal memoir (with echoes of some possibly real-life events), Shock tells the wide-ranging story of Rick Rousser, a young man raised by strict but fair parents in West Texas soon after the Vietnam War.
Rick’s “normal” childhood in Lubbock (“the hometown of Buddy Holly, Texas Tech University, and prairie dogs”) follows the storied pattern that points toward success once he graduates from high school. He goes to Tech and the University of Texas at Austin, becomes a pharmacist, and marries his college sweetheart. His dream is to have a family and settle down. But that dream quickly is shattered by shocking circumstances, and Rick lurches into divorce, followed by numbing despair, depression, and drunkenness. >>READ MORE
Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole
>> archive
Author documents legal hangings in Texas
Denton author West Gilbreath has compiled a fascinating book on execution by hanging in Texas. Death on the Gallows: The Encyclopedia of Legal Hangings in Texas (Wild Horse Press, $34.95 paperback), is a 416-page volume documenting 467 executions in Texas from 1834 through 1923, when Texas switched to death by electrocution.
Each hanging gets a half to a full page or more in the 8-1/2×11 book, arranged alphabetically by county. At the end Gilbreath provides a chronology of the executions as well as an alphabetical listing of the 464 men and three women who were hanged, when they were executed, for what crimes, and in what county.
Of course, I immediately checked the alphabetical list to see if any Dromgooles were in there. There weren’t!
Gilbreath, a captain with the University of North Texas Police Department, produced a similar book several years ago listing the legal hangings in New Mexico. He also collects Texas and New Mexico sheriff badges and other old west memorabilia, and his first name really is West.
Barbecue cookbook: The editors of Southern Living magazine have produced a new full-color cookbook, Texas BBQ: Platefuls of Legendary Lone Star Flavor (Oxmoor House, $19.99 paperback).
The collection includes recipes for rubs, salsas, appetizers, sides and desserts as well as seventy pages devoted to meat and fish, including mouth-watering two-page spreads on smoked beef tenderloin and King Ranch chicken. Whether you like to cook or just like to read cookbooks and drool over them, “Texas BBQ” provides plenty of food for thought, or action.
Capitol tales: Prolific Texas author and historian Mike Cox has written Legends & Lore of the Texas Capitol (History Press, $21.99 paperback), a 224-page collection of more than thirty tales he has heard over the years related to the state capitol building in Austin.
A few intriguing titles: “The Man Who Burned Down the Capitol,” “The Lost Sword,” “Tex O’Reilly Storms the Senate,” and “The Day They Ate the Capitol.
Cox writes that his first paying job was in the capitol as a glorified page in 1965. Later, as a newspaper reporter, he often covered stories at the capitol, including the day in 1983 that the building caught fire and nearly was lost before firefighters got the blaze under control.
* * * * *
Glenn Dromgoole’s latest book is West Texas StoriesContact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.
>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life
Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference awards $18,000 in cash prizes in writing competitions
DENTON — Kim Horner of Richardson, communications manager at the University of Texas at Dallas, received the top prize of $3,000 and a provisional book contract with the University of North Texas Press in the Book Manuscript competition sponsored by the 2017 Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. >>READ MORE
Four Texas authors win RITAs at Romance Writers of America convention
AUSTIN — Austin author Cheryl Etchison won the 2017 Romance Writers of America RITA award for Best First Book for Once and For All: An American Valor Novel. The RWA announced the winners of the 2017 RITA® Award, which recognizes excellence in published romance novels and novellas, at its annual convention on July 27 in Orlando, Florida.
Three other Texas authors — Weina Dai Randel, Tammy L. Gray, and Roni Loren — won national recognition for their books in what’s been called the Academy Awards of romance writing. >>READ MORE
Lake Union Publishing
Paperback, 978-1-5039-3997-4 (also available as an e-book, an audiobook, and on Audible), 334 pgs., $14.95
May 16, 2017
In 1943 in the Hidalgo County courthouse, Della Lee Trujillo is found guilty of the murder of her sister, Eula Lee, and sentenced to life in prison. Seventy years later, ninety-year-old Della returns to the fictional Texas border town of Puerto Pesar on parole. Della is ready for the Truth Days, ready to tell tales about the Before Days and the After Days; she just needs the right ear to hear them. Enter Mick Anders, a cynical reporter from Boston who has one last chance to save his career.
Before the Rain Falls: A Novel by San Antonio’s Camille Di Maio is a historical mystery, moving back and forth in time from the dark days of the Lee family’s past to the present-day troubles of Puerto Pesar. A record-breaking drought and poverty plague the town. As happens in trying times, desperate people turn to religion and the supernatural for solace and hope. >>READ MORE
Grand Central Publishing
Hardcover, 978-1-4555-5843-8, (also available as an e-book, an audiobook, and on Audible), 384 pgs., $26.00; July 18, 2017
“When you lose your memory, it’s a chance for the people around you to rewrite history.”
When she was seventeen, Jane Norton drove a SUV off a twisty road in an affluent Austin suburb, killing her best friend and next-door neighbor, David Hall. Jane suffered a closed-head injury that put her in a coma for four days and erased her memory of the three years preceding the accident (“The old Jane died; every version of David died”). Two years later, nineteen-year-old Jane is homeless, friendless, and family-less: she cannot bear to live in the house next door to David’s parents, and her mother refuses to move; her former friends turned on her, blaming her for popular golden-boy David’s death; she flunked out of college, unable to cope with the stress.
On the second anniversary of David’s death, Jane wakes to a message on social media: “I know what you claim you don’t remember, Jane. I know what happened that night. And I’m going to tell. All will pay.” When David’s mother, Perri, arrives at his grave that morning, “All will pay” is scrawled across the granite in white chalk. These taunts set in motion a chain of events prodding Jane’s memory awake, an intolerable threat to those who never forgot. >>READ MORE
Leave a Reply