Contributing Editor

11.26.2017

WESTERN FICTION

Preston Lewis

Bluster’s Last Stand: The Memoirs of H. H. Lomax

Wild Horse Press

Paperback, 978-1-68179-096-1, $19.95

Reading nineteenth-century Old West memoirs can be a fast way to fall asleep — unless they have been written in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by San Angelo novelist Preston Lewis, a Spur Award winner and former president of the Western Writers of America.

Bluster’s Last Stand is the frequently hilarious fourth book in Lewis’s “Memoirs of H. H. Lomax” series. In this new entry, Lomax survives the Battle of Adobe Walls, gets into a deadly feud with General George Armstrong Custer (whom he derides as “General Bluster”), and later lands an unusual job in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Along the way, he also works as a bouncer and guard in a Waco bordello and prospects for gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota. >>READ MORE

TEXAS SPORTS HISTORY

Michael Hurd

Thursday Night Lights: The Story of Black High School Football in Texas

University of Texas Press

Hardcover, 978-1-4773-1034-2, 260 pages plus 49 b/w photos, appendixes, index; $24.95

October 2017

Reviewed by Chris Manno

Michael Hurd’s Thursday Night Lights is an important story wrapped up in a problematic book. In Texas, “Friday Night Lights” refers to the tradition of high school football on Friday nights, white student leagues only, not the black leagues that played on Thursday nights. Hurd does a commendable job crafting a historical narrative that reflects careful research and documentation — much of which appears in the appendices which, along with the introduction, make up a whopping 30% of what is already a fairly brief text, considering the years covered. >>READ MORE

Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole

>> archive

New Texas books make great gifts

It’s that time of the year when folks like to buy books as gifts for relatives and friends who enjoy reading. Here are some new Texas books to consider.

Fiction

Before We Were Yours by Texas novelist Lisa Wingate is based on a true story about a Memphis children’s home in the 1930s that kidnapped children and sold them to wealthy families.

Wild West is a new collection of eleven Elmer Kelton short stories from the 1950s, before he became a well-known western author.

The Sawbones series by Melissa Lenhardt is a trilogy of gritty western thrillers featuring a female doctor on the Texas frontier.

The Fleecing of Fort Griffin by Preston Lewis of San Angelo is one of the funniest westerns I’ve ever read.

Distinguished Fort Worth tale-spinner James Ward Lee has penned his first novel at age 86, Girls of the Golden West, and it’s a literary gem.

Photography and Art

Watt Matthews of Lambshead, a spectacular collection of photos and text by Laura Wilson, has been brought back in an even more spectacular, expanded third edition. (Book signing: 1-3 p.m. Dec. 2, Texas Star Trading Co., downtown Abilene).

Of Texas Rivers & Texas Art is an extraordinary volume dealing with water conservation and river-related art, including fifty-four paintings by twenty contemporary Texas artists, including Abilene’s Randy Bacon.

Another exceptional art book is George W. Bush’s Portraits of Courage, color paintings and personal essays about ninety-eight service men and women

Non-Fiction

In Mighty, Mighty Matadors, Al Pickett writes about Lubbock Estacado’s 1967 undefeated state football champions, the first year the newly-integrated high school was eligible to compete.

Thursday Night Lights by Michael Hurd tells the story of black high school football in Texas before integration.

A Witness to History: George H. Mahon, West Texas Congressman, Janet M. Neugebauer’s political biography, recalls a more congenial era in American politics.

Best-selling inspirational author Max Lucado’s latest is Anxious for Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World.

Jen Hatmaker checks in with Of Mess and Moxie.

Children

One of the best Texas children’s books I’ve seen this year is This Is Texas, Y’all! The Lone Star State from A to Z by Misha Maynerick Blaise. Fun reading for the whole family.

And, for you Hank the Cowdog fans, John Erickson has produced his seventieth (yes, 70th!) book in that beloved series, The Case of the Troublesome Lady.

* * * * *.

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