Contributing Editor
TRUE CRIME
Kermit Schweidel
Folly Cove: A Smuggler’s Tale of the Pot Rebellion
Cinco Puntos Press
Hardcover, 978-1-941026-82-3 (also available as ebook), 266 pages, $16.95
February 2018
Reviewed by Si Dunn
It’s tempting to describe Folly Cove as “Reefer Madness” toked up on steroids.
This well-written book offers much more information and entertainment than that 1936 anti-marijuana film.
Folly Cove takes the reader inside the methods and cash-only economics of marijuana smuggling during the early 1970s. It describes how border patrols and federal drug agents were evaded and how a smuggler, if arrested, could slow or even stop the wheels of justice with some well-placed money and a high-dollar attorney. But in those days, conviction for possessing even small amounts could bring a long prison sentence.
Written from an insider’s perspective, Kermit Schweidel’s book recounts how a small group of young men in El Paso, including some military veterans, became enamored of getting high on marijuana in the early 1970s. At first they bought small amounts for their own consumption. Later, they began sharing it with friends and getting bigger amounts to divide and sell. >>READ MORE
F
ICTION
Barbara Taylor Sissel
What Lies Below
Lake Union Publishing
Paperback, 978-1-503-95011-5 (also available in e-book and audiobook formats), 334 pages, $14.95
May 15, 2018
Texas writer Barbara Taylor Sissel’s new novel, her ninth, is a tense, engrossing tale of abduction. It’s also a story in which secrets are held close by key characters as they help search for a missing child.
In a small Central Texas town named Wyatt, Zoe Halstead, not quite four, suddenly has disappeared from her daycare facility, and the local police and numerous townspeople have rallied to try to help Jake, a single father, find Zoe and bring her home. >>READ MORE
Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole
>> archive
6.10.2018 6.10.2018 Astros helped revive Houston’s spirits after Harvey
Houston Chronicle editorial writer and columnist Joe Holley relives the Houston Astros’ 2017 World Series championship and the city of Houston’s rebound from Hurricane Harvey in an uplifting account, Hurricane Season: The Unforgettable Story of the 2017 Houston Astros and the Resilience of a City (Hachette Books, $27 hardcover).
Holley retraces the seven games of the World Series in play-by-play, inning-by-inning drama, weaving it into the larger story of how the Astros lifted the spirits of a devastated city, and how city residents returned the favor by taking the team into their hearts.
“The Astros’ first-ever World Series victory,” Holley writes, “is a baseball story to be sure, but it’s so much more than that.
“It’s the story of a major American city… winning Americans’ hearts because of its grace and goodwill in response to pain and hardship.
“It’s the story of a team of likeable, refreshingly good-natured guys who each wore a ‘Houston Strong’ patch on their jerseys and meant it. When Houston was down, they picked the city up and carried it. They brought hope during a dark time.”
The Houston Astros — and the Houston people — gained a lot of fans last year through trial and triumph as residents literally fought for their lives and then cheered their team to unprecedented success.
“Houstonians young and old, native and new, learned they were strong and more resilient than they might have expected,” Holley writes. “They discovered wells of compassion and kindness in themselves they might not have known about. At a moment of crisis, they did themselves proud.”
Holley is also the author of a biography of Sammy Baugh — Slingin’ Sam: The Life and Times of the Greatest Quarterback Ever to Play the Game.
Biography: John Chisum: Frontier Cattle King by Texas State Historian Bill O’Neal offers a concise biography (140 pages) of the colorful and influential cattle baron who at one time, O’Neal writes, owned more cattle than any person in America (Eakin Press, $19.95 paperback).
Chisum (not to be confused with Jesse Chisholm, for whom the Chisholm Trail was named) moved his herds west from Texas to New Mexico and, by the time he died at age 60 in 1884, he was known as the “Cattle King of the Pecos” and even the “Cattle King of America.”
John Wayne played the cattleman in the 1970 movie Chisum about the Lincoln County War of 1878.
Historical fiction: Lamar’s Folly by Jeffrey Stuart Kerr is a historical novel based on the life and actions of the second president of the Republic of Texas, Mirabeau B. Lamar, a political and personal enemy of Sam Houston and considered the “Father of Education” in Texas (Texas Tech University Press, $24.95 paperback).
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
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. All year long we promote 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 2018’s #1 Top Bookish Destination. Where in this city celebrating its tricentennial this year would you find a colorful reading corner inside one of its hometown retailers?
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) went wanting for a winner. We’ll reveal the place now — it’s the Poet Tree, in Houston (yeah, that would’ve been easy, for anyone who zoomed in).
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