Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,
Contributing Editor
HISTORICAL FICTION/TEXANA
Jeffrey Stuart Kerr
Lamar’s Folly: A Novel
Texas Tech University Press
Paperback, 978-1682830185, 320 pages, $24.95
Reviewed by Si Dunn
Nearly 177 years after he ended his term as second president of the Texas Republic, Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar remains a controversial figure in Lone Star history.
He is remembered for some good things: heroics during the Battle of San Jacinto; picking the tiny riverfront village of Waterloo (now Austin) as the republic’s new capitol; and convincing the state legislature to set aside generous swaths of land to support public education.
But, along the way, Lamar also became bitter enemies with another Texas Revolution hero, Sam Houston, first president of the republic. Unlike Houston, Lamar opposed Texas becoming part of the United States. Instead, he wanted to see the republic thrive and expand westward to the Pacific, to help strengthen its independence. >>READ MORE
Lone Star Lit launches Indiegogo campaign ’18: Help us showcase more books, more authors, more ways in 2018!
Lone Star Literary Life covers the Texas literary scene like no one else, week in and week out. Since 2015, we’ve given Texas authors, booksellers, libraries, publishers, and readers a trusted platform of their own. With shrinking coverage devoted to books in mainstream media — and most of that focused on the same handful of national bestsellers — where were Texas authors to get noticed, and where were Texas readers to discover the books they crave? We’ve stepped up to make sure the Lone Star State doesn’t lose touch with its rich literary heritage, and that Texas books get their due.
At the start of our second year, notable Texas literary figures gave us a boost by taking part in a testimonial video, produced by Doug Baum of Waco. We think our case holds up remarkably well — and we’ve featured it in our 2018 campaign as well. Check out out, below.
We hope you’ll be able to spare a tiny bit of your budget to help take our coverage to the next level in 2018. We’ve got some great new books coming up as perks, and some attractive discounts on book promotional packages as well.
Visit the campaign site at https://igg.me/at/LoneStarLiterary
Thanks in advance, y’all!
Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole
>> archive
Happy (Texas) reading in 2018
As announced last week, “Texas Reads” columnist Glenn Dromgoole is taking a well-deserved break for a couple of weeks (and catching up on some choice reading!)
>> FROM TEXAS READS, 12.31.17
Big names: Two best-selling books by Texas-related authors I should have gotten around to this fall, but didn’t, are What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism by Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner, and Sisters First: Stories from Our Wild and Wonderful Life by Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Pierce Bush. I plan to read them early in the new year.
Meanwhile, I’m going to take a short break from the column. I still have a good stack of Texas books to look through, and more will be arriving soon. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks.
Happy reading in 2018.
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Glenn Dromgoole writes about Texas books and authors. Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.
>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life
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Dutton Books
Hardcover, 978-1-1019-8555-7, (also available as an e-book, an audiobook, a paperback large print, and on audio CD), 368 pgs., $26.00
January 30, 2018
Shannon Kerber wakes in the night and discovers her infant daughter crying in the arms of a stranger seated on the living-room sofa. When Shannon’s husband returns from a San Antonio Spurs game, she’s gone, the baby cold and crying in the draft from the open front door. Shannon is the fifth abduction in the area in the last six months. Caitlin Hendrix, a newly minted special agent with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (the famous profilers), heads to fictional Solace, Texas, to hunt a hunter.
Into the Black Nowhere: An UNSUB Novel is Meg Gardiner’s second installment in her new UNSUB series of thrillers, soon to be a CBS television series. >>READ MORE
Flatiron Books
Hardcover, 978-1-2501-6973-0, (also available as an e-book, as an audiobook, and on audio CD), 400 pgs., $26.99
January 16, 2018
Oliver Loving is seventeen — an awkward, lonesome, aspiring poet with “a nearly anaphylactic aversion to prolonged eye contact,” in first-love with the mysterious new girl Rebekkah Sterling — when he walks into a high-school dance and never walks out. Hector, an enraged, deceived, despairing young man with a gun, cuts Oliver down, along with four others. Ten years later Oliver remains in a vegetative condition; one bullet has decimated his brainstem and, with it, his family.
Oliver’s first neural exam in several years is days away. Eve, Oliver’s mother, who visits her son daily, regards the exam with a “dread that [is] tidal and annihilating.” She clutches a hope that Oliver is still in that husk somewhere. To learn that he is not may snap the last thread of her sanity. The question in that room with Eve every day is, of course,
Lone Star Lit launches Indiegogo campaign ’18: Help us showcase more books, more authors, more ways in 2018! >>READ MORE
LONE STAR LISTENS interviews >> archive
Author interviews by Kay Ellington
1.14.2018 Minutaglio and Davis tag-team new tome on dope doc Timothy Leary
Collaborating successfully on a writing project takes a special kind of talent —and hefty doses of patience, compromise, and careful time management. Texas writers Bill MinutaglioSteven L. Davis have teamed up for a second nonfiction title from well-regarded publisher Twelve that has garnered critical praise. The authors joined forces as well for an email interview in this week’s Lone Star Lit, discussing their separate backgrounds and shared processes in The Most Dangerous Man in America: Timothy Leary, Richard Nixon and the Hunt for the Fugitive King of LSD.
LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Bill, you were born in Brooklyn in the mid-1950s and grew up there. As an adult in the late seventies your varied and exciting experiences included earning a graduate degree from Columbia journalism school; interning at the United Nations; being a part of a government food distribution program for poor children in Harlem — and starting off as a beginning reporter for the Abilene Reporter-News. What made you decide to come to Texas, and what was it like adjusting to the Lone Star State?
BILL MINUTAGLIO: I was offered a job at the newspaper in Abilene when I was graduating from journalism school. I had never been west of the Mississippi before and thought it would be a wonderful, important adventure. It was the best decision I ever made, in many ways. I got my New York City ego kicked out of me, and I met so many great people. One of the people at my first newspaper in Abilene had been one of Buddy Holly’s backup singers — how about that! I wound up covering rodeos, goat cook-offs, and a million things I knew nothing about. I learned how much I had to learn. It took me a long time to adjust, and I guess I still am [adjusting]. I love Texas, and every place I’ve lived in.
Steve, where did you grow up, and how did it influence your lifelong writing about iconoclasts?
STEVE DAVIS: I grew up on the tail end of the 1960s in a working-class suburb of Dallas regarded as “The Pee Wee Football Capital of the World.” I spent a lot of time cracking heads with other kids on the gridiron. In the classroom, football coaches–posing–as–history teachers preached that noble coonskin-cap wearing Anglo-Americans had marched into the wilderness, vanquished evil enemies, and created a glorious paradise on earth. Well, you know, I believed all that. >>READ MORE
Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events
Bookish Texas event highlights 1.14.2018 >> GO this week Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor
SPECIAL EVENTS THIS WEEK
- FronteraFest 2018, Austin, January 16-February 17
- Austin Book, Paper, and Photo Show, January 20-21
DALLAS Mon., Jan. 15 Interabang Books, Steve Stoler discussing and signing TONIGHT AT TEN, 7PM
SAN ANTONIO Mon, Jan. 15 Charline McCombs Empire Theatre, Storytelling with the Original Mississippi Freedom Riders, 6PM
AUSTIN Tues., Jan. 16 Chez Zee American Bistro, Chez Zee Author-Speaker Series 2018 featuring S.C. Gwynne, author of Empire of the Summer Moon, The Perfect Pass, and Rebel Yell, 6:15PM
HOUSTON Tues., Jan. 16 Blue Willow Bookshop, Marie Lu will discuss and sign her new novel BATMAN: NIGHTWALKER, 7PM
AUSTIN Wed., Jan. 17 BookPeople, MELANIE BENJAMIN speaking & signing The Girls in the Picture, 7PM [ticketed event]
ALSO SIGNING IN DALLAS Wed., Jan. 17 Highland Park United Methodist Church, Friends of the SMU Libraries, 6PM
ALSO SIGNING IN NORTH RICHLAND HILLS Fri., Jan. 19 North Richland Hills Library, 1PM
BRONTE Wed., Jan. 17 The Bronte Book Club, Dana Glossbrenner presents “One Writer’s Trip: The Lark”, TBA
DALLAS Thurs., Jan. 18 First United Methodist Church of Dallas, Arts & Letters Live! presents Daisy Goodwin, creator/producer/screenwriter of the PBS Masterpiece series Victoria, and author of The American Heiress and The Fortune Hunter, 7:30PM
EL PASO Thurs., Jan. 18 Literarity Book Shop, An Evening with El Paso Poets Rosa Alcala and Sasha Pimentel, 6PM
ROCKPORT Fri., Jan. 19 Texas Maritime Museum, Reception and book signing with Miles Arceneaux, 5:30PM
SAN ANTONIO Sat., Jan. 20 The Twig Book Shop, Jeremy Banas signing Pearl: A History of San Antonio’s Iconic Beer, 11AM
DALLAS Sun., Jan. 21 The Foundry Club, Writing Workshops Dallas presents “How to Self-Edit: 50 Essential Tips for Honing Every Manuscript” with Blake Atwood, 3PM
News Briefs 1.14.18
Texas Book Festival announces 2018 weekend to take place on October 27–28
Nonprofit celebrates successful 2017 Festival Weekend with record-setting attendance and Hurricane Harvey book donations
AUSTIN — The Texas Book Festival is proud to announce that its 2017 Festival Weekend was the most successful on record, with 50,000 attendees coming together on November 4 and 5 in the largest celebration of books and literacy in the Festival’s history. The Texas Book Festival will return for its 23rd year on October 27 and 28, 2018, and will once again be held in and around the Texas State Capitol in downtown Austin.
The 2017 Festival Weekend featured 300 authors, including Tom Hanks, Dan Rather, Gail Simmons, Attica Locke, Min Jin Lee, Mark Bittman, Jenna Bush Hager, Barbara Pierce Bush, and Walter Isaacson. Held November 3 at the Four Seasons Hotel, the annual First Edition Literary Gala raised more than $630,000 for the nonprofit organization and its literacy programs. >>READ MORE
The Writers’ League of Texas hosts Dallas workshop Jan. 23: “Building Your Writing Community: How to Find Writing Groups & Support Other Writers”
January 23, 2018, 7 p.m.; free and open to the public
Interabang Books, 10720 Preston Rd., Ste. 1009B , Dallas, Texas 75230
Writing can feel like a solitary pursuit, but, in reality, a strong community can be key to writing success. If you’re seeking motivation to put pen to paper or looking for feedback on your work, finding a writing/critique partner or group can take you and your work to the next level. But how do you go about finding your writing soul mate(s)? And once you’ve found them, how do you deliver effective feedback on others’ work and you keep your group or partnership going? Join this panel of writing professionals for insights into finding your writing community. >>READ MORE
North Texas Teen Book Festival 2018 confirms 76 authors confirmed for one of the nation’s largest teen book fests, April 2018
IRVING — The North Texas Teen Book Festival has announced 76 rock-star and debut authors attending the fourth annual event. April 20 and 21, more than 12,000 students, parents and educators are expected to pack the Irving Convention Center at Las Colinas for the massive event. The festival began as a dream of an Irving Public librarian, and in 2017, the festival earned the distinction of becoming the nation’s largest educator- and librarian-run book festival for teens and tweens.
Presenters include the world-renowned Dav Pilkey, famous for the “Captain Underpants” franchise; Cassandra Clare, author of the Mortal Instruments series; and Angie Thomas (above), whose meteoric rise to fame began with her 2017 debut novel The Hate U Give. The 2018 event includes a wide assortment of new and returning bestselling authors appealing to the young and the young at heart, such as Jenny Han (Always and Forever, Lara Jean), Jennifer and Matthew Holm (Babymouse), Leigh Bardugo (The Language of Thorns), Nicola Yoon (The Sun is Also a Star) and local favorite Michael Merschel (Revenge of the Star Survivors). >>READ MORE
TLA anounces Steves, Díaz as keynoters for April 2018 conference
The Texas Library Association (TLA) is proud to announce that Rick Steves and Junot Díaz will deliver keynote presentations at the 2018 TLA Annual Conference in Dallas, April 3-6, 2018.
The organization invites paritcipants to broaden their your global perspectives at General Session I. Libraries and travel have much in common; both expand our understanding by exposing people to different cultures and perspectives.
————— A D V E R T I S E M E N T —————
Lone Star Listens compilation available spring 2018, for readers, fans, and writers everywhere
The present generation of Texas authors is the most diverse ever in gender, age, and ethnicity, and in subject matter as well.
Week in, week out, Lone Star Literary has interviewed a range of Texas-related authors with a cross-section of genre and geography. To capture this era in Texas letters, we’re pleased to bring you
Lone Star Listens:
Texas Authors on Writing and Publishing
edited by Kay Ellington and Barbara Brannon; introduction by Clay Reynolds
Available in trade paper, library hardcover, and ebook Spring 2018
360 pages, with b/w illustrations and index
Featuring novelists, poets, memoirists, editors, and publishers, including:
Rachel Caine • Chris Cander • Katherine Center • Chad S. Conine • Sarah Cortez • Elizabeth Crook • Nan Cuba • Carol Dawson • Patrick Dearen • Jim Donovan • Mac Engel • Sanderia Faye • Carlos Nicolás Flores • Ben Fountain • Jeff Guinn • Stephen Harrigan • Cliff Hudder • Stephen Graham Jones • Kathleen Kent • Joe R. Lansdale • Melissa Lenhardt • Attica Locke • Nikki Loftin • Thomas McNeely • Leila Meacham • John Pipkin • Joyce Gibson Roach • Antonio Ruiz-Camacho • Lisa Sandlin • Donna Snyder • Mary Helen Specht • Jodi Thomas • Amanda Eyre Ward • Ann Weisgarber • Donald Mace Williams
As a collection of insights into the writing and publishing life, the book will be useful in creative writing classes (not just in Texas alone) and other teaching settings, as well as for solo reading and study—and a great Texas reference volume.
- Examination and review copies will be available fall 2017 in watermarked pdf format.
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