Contributing Editor

MEMOIR

Alex Lemon

Feverland: A Memoir in Shards

Milkweed Editions

Paperback,  978-1-57131-336-2, 312 pages, $16.00; September 2017

Reviewed by Si Dunn

Imagine that your entire life can be viewed, frozen in place, in one big mirror. Now, drop the mirror. Let it shatter and scatter into countless pieces. As you pick up some of the fragments, one at a time, write down what you see in each piece and try to make it connect somehow with the next piece you lift.

Associative. That’s the easiest adjective to describe the structure of Fort Worth writer Alex Lemon’s latest memoir. (His previous works include Happy: A Memoir and several poetry collections.)

Feverland: A Memoir in Shards jumps quickly from one time, place and memory to another memory that is somehow connected. And each biographical “shard” may consume one short paragraph or a page or several pages.

Initially, the book can be challenging reading. But it soon becomes rewarding. Lemon understands the power of using short, clear sentences to build toward deeper meanings. At the same time, he does not shy away from using longer sentences (sometimes very long) to alter the rhythms and flow of thoughts.  >>READ MORE

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. >>READ MORE

Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole

>> archive

Texas children’s author David Davis was a friend

I’m sad to report that David Davis, one of my favorite Texas children’s authors and a good friend, died on May 24. He wrote children’s books that adults probably enjoyed and understood more than the children they read them to.

Among his titles: Texas Mother Goose, Ten Redneck Babies, Redneck Night Before Christmas, Librarian’s Night Before Christmas, Texas Zeke and the Longhorn, and The Twelve Days of Christmas—in Texas, That Is. Most of his books are still in print.

Here are two of my favorites from Texas Mother Goose, which Carlton Stowers and I included in our selection of 101 Essential Texas Books a few years ago.

 Breakfast with Humpty Dumpty

 Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

 Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

 All the ranch cowboys and all the vaqueros

 Got a big breakfast of huevos rancheros.

 Three Blind Mice

 Three blind mice,

 See how they run!

 They ran for Senate up Austin way,

 Since they’re blind it’s the place to stay;

 They’re just like senators in every way,

 Those three blind mice.

David had a wonderful sense of humor and often teamed up with fellow Fort Worth children’s author Jan Peck to put on delightful programs for schools, libraries and book festivals.

He also wrote a collection of stories about his Grandpaw Lacy and allowed me to include one of them, a gently moving piece called “Wages for a Hired Hand,” in the book of West Texas Christmas Stories I edited in 2013.

In 2004 David and I did a book signing together and were virtually ignored while folks literally lined up out the door to get former Texas Tech football coach Spike Dykes to autograph his new book, Tales from the Texas Tech Sidelines.

We joked that never again would we try to compete against a football coach at a book signing. I will miss him.

New Texas novel: How the Cowboy Was Won is the latest novel from popular Texas romance author Lori Wilde (Avon Books, $7.99 paperback).

Set in the fictional town of Cupid, Texas, the story features the town matchmaker, who can’t seem to find a match for herself, and a cowboy who is her best friend. She tries to hitch him up with the right gal, but who might that be?

Folklore: Legends and Life in Texas: Folklore in the Lone Star State in Stories and Song, edited by Kenneth L. Untiedt, is the annual volume published by the Texas Folklore Society based on presentations at the society’s get-togethers (University of North Texas Press, $45 hardcover).

As always, there is plenty of good reading here for those interested in history and folklore, including this intriguing title: “Yodels, Cattle Calls, and Other Melodious Sounds.”

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).