Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,

Contributing Editor

Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole

>> archive

Magic Tree House features 1900 Galveston hurricane

Mary Pope Osborne, author of the popular Magic Tree House series of children’s books, turns her attention to the disastrous 1900 Galveston hurricane in Hurricane Heroes in Texas (Random House, $13.99 hardcover).

Jack and Annie have a magical tree house near their home in Frog Creek, Pa. From there they are able to travel back through time and experience history first hand, then return home where time has stood still. Their new adventure calls for them to get to Galveston before the hurricane hits and warn people to seek higher ground. But no one wants to heed their warning. They’ve seen storms before; they’re not worried.

Then the massive storm surges onto the island, destroying everything in its path. Jack and Annie join a mother, Rose, and her baby, Lily, as they climb to the roof, then hang on for dear life to a piece of the roof that becomes their raft. At the Ursuline Academy, the highest point in town, they encounter Sister Mary Joseph and the other nuns who are sheltering hundreds of residents from the floodwaters.

Jack and Annie help out, then they are ready to head back home to Pennsylvania — if they can find their magical tree house that’s been blown away in the storm.

Osborne teamed up with her sister, Natalie Pope Boyce, to produce a 128-page companion Fact Tracker Texas book ($6.99 paperback) that offers a lot of history and other factual information about Texas.

Both books are intended for ages 7 through 10. Hurricane Heroes in Texas is the thirtieth book in Osborne’s best-selling Magic Tree House series. As she was writing the book last year, Hurricane Harvey struck the Texas coast with a vengeance.

“This book is inspired by the hope and courage of Texans,” she writes.

Hispanics in Texas History: Historian Harriett Denise Joseph is the author of From Santa Anna to Selena: Notable Mexicanos and Tejanos in Texas History since 1821(University of North Texas Press, $29.95 hardcover).

In addition to the book’s two title figures, Joseph offers substantive biographical essays on early Tejano leaders Erasmo and Juan Seguin, controversial folk hero/criminal Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, Adina De Zavala (the Angel of the Alamo), labor activist Emma Tenayuca, Medal of Honor winner Roy Benavidez, husband and wife educators Jovita Gonzalez and Edmundo E. Mireles, and Latina legislator Irma Rangel.

“Tragedy and triumph, brutality and heroism, success and failure,” Joseph notes, “all can be found in the lives of the eleven notables profiled in these pages.”

Each of the biographical profiles is about forty pages long, including bibliography and endnotes, and Joseph’s introductory and concluding essays reflect on the contributions of Hispanics in helping shape Texas history.

* * * * *

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

4th Annual Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop set for Oct. 13-14

Now in its fourth year, the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop annual event will feature writing coaches, agents, and publishers from around the country, October 13-14, 2018.

The two-day workshop event will be held in Midland, at the Marie Hall Academic Building at Midland College.

The workshop will feature ten speakers, including Margie Lawson, Christie Craig, Manning Wolfe, David Farland, Reavis Z. Wortham, Kristen Marten, Stephen Graham Jones, Donna M. Johnson, B. Alan Bourgeois and Arlene Gale. >>READ MORE

Ecco Books

Hardcover, 978-0-0626-8884-2 (also available as an e-book, audiobook, and large-print paperback), 448 pgs., $27.99

September 25, 2018

“Nautonomy: the asymmetrical production and distribution of life chances which limit and erode the possibilities of political participation.” —David Held, Democracy and the Global Order

Ben Fountain pulls no punches. “This wasn’t Democrats versus Republicans so much as the sad, psychotic, and vengeful in the national life producing a strange mutation,” he writes, “a creature comprised of degenerate political logic.”

Where were you when you heard the news? You remember, don’t you, whether you thought the news was fantastic or catastrophic? I do; I was somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean on a 787 bound for New Delhi. So, naturally, at 9 p.m. EST I began pestering the cabin crew for election news. The pilot resorted to announcing updates and when it was done, when the result was announced, I cried.

I write this review on the day Paul Manafort pleads guilty to conspiracy against the United States.

Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution is the first book of nonfiction from Ben Fountain, a former attorney, whose fiction is famous. You may not be familiar with Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, a collection of short stories which won the PEN/Hemingway Award in 2007, but you cannot have avoided Fountain’s novel, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2013 and became a film directed by Ang Lee — Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.

“I was having feelings. They weren’t good feelings,” Fountain writes. “By Thanksgiving, 2015, these feelings had crystalized into a sense that something new and ugly was afoot in the land of the famously free.” So, The Guardian newspaper dispatched him to the campaign trail to “figure out what the hell was going on out there.” The result was a series of essays for the newspaper which eventually became Beautiful Country Burn Again. >>READ MORE

St. Martin’s Press

Hardcover, 978-1-2501-9316-2 (also available as an e-book and an audiobook), 416 pgs., $27.99

September 4, 2018

“Girls want marvelous adventures just as much as boys do.” —L. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz

“Here’s the first thing you should know about Miss Cathy Williams,” Sarah Bird writes. “I am the daughter of the daughter of a queen and my mama never let me forget it.”

Williams was born a captive prisoner of war — never a slave — on a Missouri tobacco farm. Her mother raised an intelligent, resilient, fierce warrior-woman, nurturing Williams with tales of an African grandmother who was a warrior-wife of the Leopard King.

In the waning days of the Civil War, Williams is plucked from the farm by Maj. Gen. Philip Henry Sheridan to be a helper for his cook. Traveling with and feeding the Army of the Potomac’s Cavalry Corps engenders a sense of purpose in Williams, and she sees joining the Buffalo Corps at the end of the Civil War as the only option for a life of independence and honor. >>READ MORE

WHAT TEXANS ARE READING

LONE STAR LISTENS interviews >> archive

Author interviews by Lone Star Lit staff

9.16.2018 Ben Montgomery on how West Texas, the Great Depression, oddballs, quests, and his love of words became his new book, “The Man Who Walked Backward”

Ben Montgomery’s new book of narrative nonfiction, The Man Who Walked Backward: An American Dreamer’s Search for Meaning in the Great Depression, lands on shelves September 18. Montgomery spoke with Lone Star Literary Life about how an interest in agriculture became a career in journalism, the sources of inspiration, amazing women, the Chautauqua tradition, and the swagger of Texas.

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: You were born in Oklahoma, Ben. How would you describe your formative years?

BEN MONTGOMERY: My dad was a Southern Baptist preacher and long-haul trucker, which is to say he was something of a stranger to me, a void. My mother ran a day-care center and cleaned the church and tried hard to give me and my brothers what we needed. I spent summers on my grandparents’ farm in Slick, Oklahoma, which wasn’t much more than a wide spot on Highway 16, between Bristow and Beggs. When I wasn’t hunting armadillos or arrowheads I’d sit on my granny’s back-porch swing and look out on the wheat field and listen to her tell stories about growing up in Oklahoma. She convinced me I was her favorite grandchild. My brothers never knew. They became rodeo cowboys. I wanted that, too, for a long while, and I went off to college in Arkansas to learn the agriculture business so I could come back to the Plains and live off the land. But her stories planted something inside me I could not escape.

You studied journalism in college and worked at several newspapers, including the San Angelo Standard-Times in Texas, before ending up at the Tampa Bay Times, where you’ve spent most of a twenty-year newspaper career. In 2010 you were nominated for a Pulitzer. What drew you to journalism?

My high-school girlfriend stayed home when I went off to college. I was only four hours east on Interstate 40, but I missed her something bad. And being Southern Baptists, we’d both made promises to God and the youth pastor at church that we would not fornicate before marriage. Her promise was stronger than mine. Alas, I asked her to marry me halfway through my first academic year, and she said yes … on one condition. She did not want to be a farmer’s wife. I needed a new path. I stumbled into a feature-writing class, and I liked it. I changed my major from ag business to journalism, which might put me in rare company. I’m still in love with words. >>READ MORE

Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events
Bookish Texas event highlights 9.16.2018>> GO this weekMichelle Newby, Contributing Editor

SPECIAL EVENTS THIS WEEK

STAPLE! Independent Media Expo, Austin, September 8-9
Heritage Auctions: Rare Books & Maps, Dallas, September 13
Texas Word Wrangler Festival, Giddings, September 13-15
Literacy Instruction for Texas presents Toast to Literacy, Dallas, September 14
Jaipur Literature Festival, Houston, September 14-15
Picture Book Retreat for Authors & Illustrators, Temple, September 14-16

ONGOING EVENTS

Oliver Jeffers: 15 Years of Picturing Books, Abilene, June 7-September 30
“Dawoud Bey: Forty Years in Harlem” photography exhibition (from the book Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply), Austin, August 29-December 8
The Texas Liberator: Witness to the Holocaust exhibition (from the book The Texas Liberators: Veteran Narratives from World War II), Houston, September 7-October 28

DALLAS Mon., Sept. 17 Interabang Books, Sylvia Acevedo reading and signing PATH TO THE STARS, 7PM

HOUSTON Tues., Sept. 18 Petroleum Club of Houston, World Affairs Council of Greater Houston presents Bethany McLean discussing and signing Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It’s Changing the World, 11:30AM

ALSO READING IN HOUSTON Tues., Sept. 18 Brazos Bookstore, 7PM

ALSO READING IN SPRING Tues., Sept. 18 HARC, Petroleum Club of Houston, 6:30PM

ALSO READING IN DALLAS Wed., Sept. 19 B&N – Lincoln, 7PM

ALSO READING IN AUSTIN Thurs., Sept. 20 Central Library, BETHANY MCLEAN (in conversation with Alex Hannaford), 7PM [ticketed event]

RICHARDSON Mon., Sept. 19 Richardson Public Library, Writers Guild of Texas workshop: “Plot from Character” with Tex Thompson, 7PM

SAN ANTONIO Tues., Sept. 18 Central Library, San Antonio Book Festival presents Get Lit with Mimi Swartz, author of Ticker: The Quest to Create an Artificial Heart, 5:30PM

AUSTIN Wed, Sept. 19 BookPeople, SARAH SMARSH speaking & signing Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth (in conversation with Rose Cahalan of the Texas Observer), 7PM

ALSO SIGNING IN HOUSTON Thurs., Sept. 20 Blue Willow Bookshop, 7PM

DALLAS Thurs., Sept. 20 Dallas Museum of Art, Arts & Letters Live: Sarah Bird presents Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen, 7:30PM

SAN ANTONIO Fri., Sept. 21St. Philip’s College, President’s Lecture Series: Hidden Figures author, Margot Lee Shetterly, 11AM

AUSTIN Sat., Sept. 22 Hat Creek Burger Company, Texas Book Festival’s first “Books and Breakfast” event will feature Austin-based children’s author Cate Berry, 8:30AM

SAN ANTONIO Sat., Sept. 22 Central Library, David Bowles discussing and signing Myths of Mexico: Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky, 3PM

AUSTIN Sun., Sept. 23 Malvern Books, Texas State MFA faculty reading with Cyrus Cassells, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Debra Monroe, 1PM

HOUSTON Sun., Sept. 22 Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Pete Gershon launches Collision: The Contemporary Art Scene in Houston, 1972-1985 with a short presentation, panel discussion and book signing with several featured artists, and a group photo opportunity for Houston artists from the era in Glassell’s atrium, TBA

News Briefs 9.16.18

IN MEMORIAM | TEXAS LITERARY LIGHTS

Debra Winegarten
1958–2018

Debra Lou Winegarten was born in Dallas on December 29, 1957 to Ruthe and Alvin Winegarten, and passed from this life on September 10, 2018, the first day of Rosh Hashanah 5779. Debra was an author, publisher, educator, flutist, and all-around rabble-rousing feminist who delighted in inspiring and challenging others.

Winegarten received her undergraduate education at Texas Woman’s University, where she discovered her passion for sociology. She appreciated the skill and confidence that came from her experiences at TWU, and she served as president of the Austin TWU Alumni chapter for several years. Winegarten received her master’s in sociology from The Ohio State University, and taught sociology at the college level, most recently at South University and The Art Institute, both in Austin. She also founded Sociosights Press, whose mission is to publish books that “transform society one story at a time,” in accordance with the principles of tikkun olam.

Winegarten reveled in being a Jew in Texas; she found comfort and inspiration in the practice of Judaism, and was a member of Congregation Agudas Achim in Austin. A third-generation Dallasite, Winegarten pursued a strong interest in Jewish history that her to become involved in the Texas Jewish Historical Society, where she took on leadership positions, including a term as president. She made a point of visiting Jewish historical sites wherever she traveled, from Cairo, Egypt to Dublin, Ireland and Waco, Texas.

Winegarten authored a number of books, specializing in biography and poetry, and her work garnered many awards. Her titles include There’s Jews in Texas?, Where Jewish Grandmothers Come From, Oveta Culp Hobby: Colonel, Cabinet Member, Philanthropist, Katherine Stinson: The Flying Schoolgirl, and, with Zvi Yaniv, My Life on the Mysterious Island of Nanotechnology. In June 2018, she was awarded Sarah Patton Stipend for non-fiction at The Writer’s Hotel for her memoir-in-progress. >>READ MORE

“Literary Frontiers”: The Wittliff features Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy, Paulette Jiles, and many other masters of classic historical fiction in new exhibition

SAN MARCOS — The Wittliff Collections puts the spotlight on authors who have brought to life the epic sweep of Texas history in its new exhibition, “Literary Frontiers: Historical Fiction & the Creative Imagination.”

For generations Texas writers have illuminated the human stories at the heart of legends and myths, from the trail driving cowboys in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove to the Indian wars in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and Paulette Jiles’s News of the World. The genre also includes the iconic Texas battles for independence in novels by Stephen Harrigan and Elizabeth Crook and stories of the 1900 Galveston hurricane by Ann Weisgarber and Joe R. Lansdale.

“The best historical fiction puts readers inside the minds of people making history,” says Wittliff Collections Southwestern Literature Curator Steve Davis. “These writers have breathed imaginative life into people of the past and made their times come alive for us.”

Literary Frontiers presents hand-written manuscripts, vintage maps, rare photographs, and artifacts such as the hunting watch owned by Paulette Jiles’s grandfather, which inspired the watch carried by her character Captain Jefferson Kidd in News of the World. The exhibition also includes artwork such as the original oil painting used as the cover art for the first edition of Lonesome Dove. >>READ MORE

Same Page Book Festival issues call for authors

DECATUR — The Decatur (Texas) Public Library has issued a call for authors to take part in the Same Page Book Festival. The event will take place on Saturday, September 29, 2018 from 1 to 5:30 p.m. at the library, located at 1700 Highway 51 South in Decatur. Events will include an author fair for book sales and signings and author panels for readers and writers. The closing keynote speakers will be Carol and Doug Hutchison, authors of Behind the Texas Badge. >>READ MORE

Nominations open for Texas State Artists

AUSTIN — “There is a government code that says that the legislature will name a Texas poet laureate, a state musician, and then state visual artists—one in two-dimensional art and one in three-dimensional art,” says Anina Moore with the Texas Commission on the Arts.

Moore says artists don’t receive money for this honor but there are other benefits. “We do see some recipients able to market themselves more widely or become invited to festivals and other events based on the fact that they’ve been named as state poet laureate or visual artist, things like that.” >>READ MORE

————— A D V E R T I S E M E N T —————

Lone Star Listens compilation available summer 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 Summer 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.

Twig’s Top Ten Bestsellers

Summer 2018

What are Texans reading these days, you ask? Lone Star Lit’s newest regular feature is a monthly list of trending titles at the Twig Book Shop, a leading independent bookseller in San Antonio. Click on any title for the Buy link. And we’ll also include a hotlink to related content in Lone Star Literary Life.

Jessica Honegger,Imperfect Courage: Live a Life of Purpose by Leaving Comfort and Going Scared 0-735291292

Andrew Sansom (Author), Rusty Yates (Photographer), David K. Langford (Photographer)Seasons at Selah: The Legacy of Bamberger Ranch Preserve (Myrna and David K. Langford Books on Working Land, 978-1-623496349

Carmen TafollaNew and Selected Poems (TCU Texas Poets Laureate) 978-0-875656897

Clay Bonnyman Evans,Bones of My Grandfather: Reclaiming a Lost Hero of World War II 978-1-510730613

Atul Gawande,Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, 978-1-250076226

Amor TowlesA Gentleman in Moscow 978-0-670026197

Anthony DoerrAll the Light We Cannot See,978-1-501173219

Jeremy Banas (Author), Kit Goldsbury (Foreword by), Bill Jones (Preface by)Pearl: A History of San Antonio’s Iconic Beer 978-1-540227944

Hector PachecoCanary Islanders of San Antonio (American Heritage), 978-1-467138215

Mark MansonThe Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, 978-0-062457713

LONE STAR CLASSIFIED LISTINGS

FEATURED: CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS

8.19.18 Fort Worth Poetry Society seeks submissions from poets and visual artists for an anthology on classical music, proceeds from which will benefit the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. No cost to enter; accepted submitters receive a free copy of the anthology. This link to the FWPS website provides complete details: https://fortworthpoetrysociety.wordpress.com/2018/07/23/call-for-submissions/.

6.3.18 The 2018 Chester B. Himes Memorial Short Fiction Prize

A prize of $750.00 and publication in The Ocotillo Review Winter 2019 will be awarded for a short story up to 4,200 words. Antonio Ruiz-Camacho will judge. Revenue generated will be donated to Parkinson’s research. Details: www.kallistogaiapress.org

>>READ MORE CLASSIFIED LISTINGS