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New Jodi Thomas novel debuts this week

Amarillo author Jodi Thomas’s new standalone romance, Mornings on Main set in the fictional town of Laurel Springs, Texas, officially goes on sale Tuesday (HQN, $15.99 paperback).

Jillian James is always on the move, searching for clues to her peripatetic past. She lands in small town of Laurel Springs, where she plans to stay a few weeks and maybe learn something about the father who raised her and then abruptly abandoned her.

Needing a job, she meets the town mayor and news blogger, Connor Larady, who has deep roots in Laurel Springs, where he has his hands full trying to care for an aging grandmother and a rebellious teen-age daughter while managing his family’s extensive property holdings. He hires Jillian to help curate and close the grandmother’s quilt job before she sinks completely into dementia.

As a friendship develops between Jillian and Connor, and then blossoms into a full-blown romance, Jillian makes it clear that in spite of her attraction to him, she will be moving on. She always does. She doesn’t plant roots anywhere.

Connor, meanwhile, would love to be footloose and see the world, but he can’t very well just take off and forsake his responsibilities as head of the Larady family and mayor of the town.

Thomas creates a cast of likeable characters (and a few not so likeable) in this upbeat tale about life in a small Texas town.

Next up for Jodi Thomas: Mistletoe Miracles, the seventh book in her Ransom Canyon series, scheduled for release Sept. 25.

Aggie Muster: April 21, San Jacinto Day, is a very special day to Texas Aggies. It’s kind of like a worldwide reunion when Aggies get together wherever they are and celebrate Aggie Muster.

They reminisce about their days at Texas A&M and usually hear a speech, maybe listen to a recitation of a poem called “The Last Corps Trip,” sing “The Spirit of Aggieland.” But the highlight of the day is the roll call of the absent.

As the names are read of those Aggies who have died in the past year, someone in the audience answers “Here” for them. The roll call is followed by the playing of “Taps.” It’s quite moving.

Muster is held in hundreds of locations, wherever two or more Aggies can gather. It was even held on Corregidor in 1942 before the island fell to the Japanese.

But the largest Muster is the one held on the Texas A&M campus. It always features a Muster address by a prominent Aggie or someone close to A&M.

Jerry Cooper ’63, longtime former editor of the A&M alumni magazine, has put together a collection of those speeches in “Here”: The Muster Speeches at Texas A&M University (Texas A&M University Press, $40 hardcover, 550 pages).

Cooper introduces each speaker and in a few cases has to summarize the speech if it wasn’t recorded. But most have been recorded, and Cooper lets the speeches speak for themselves.

“Here” is a volume that Aggies everywhere will cherish — perhaps as the companion to an earlier book, Softly Call the Muster: The Evolution of a Texas Aggie Tradition by John A. Adams Jr. ’73 (TAMU Press, 1994).

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Glenn Dromgoole ’66,, author of Aggie Savvy, 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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2018 TEXAS BOOKISH DESTINATIONS

Can you name this literary place in the Lone Star State?

Admit it: bookfans love traveling almost as much as they love reading itself. Beginning March 4, 2018, Lone Star Literary Life will roll out #10 through #6 in our annual list of Top Texas Bookish Destinations, for readers who want to visit the settings of their favorite books, the birthplaces and haunts of favorite authors, and hot spots for book buying, readings, and other literary activity.

     But throughout Texas’s 268,597 square miles, there are also lots of out-of-the-way points of interest that we don’t always have space to cover in our Top Ten pages.

     Watch this space each week for a new bookish place that you’ll want to add to your own travel list. Be the first to email us with the correct identification, and win a prize!

     This week, we continue with a bookish place that’s located in 2017’s #2 Top Bookish Destination. There’s plenty of poetry in this literary-rich city, but there’s a Poet Tree, too. Can you name the city? And extra credit for telling our readers the neighborhood or street where they can find it, too.

Email us at info@LoneStarLiterary.com with the specific right answer, and we’ll send you a free copy of Literary Texas.

LAST MONTH’S PHOTO (below) was correctly identified as the Capitol Gift Shop, inside the state capitol building in Austin. Congratulations — your prize is on the way!