Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,
Contributing Editor
FICTION
John C. Kerr
The Silent Shore of Memory: A Novel
Texas Christian University Press
Paperback, 978-0-87565-619-9 (also available as an ebook), 240 pgs., $22.95
February 24, 2016
Beginning in a makeshift Confederate Army hospital in the aftermath of the Battle of Fredericksburg, we follow Lieutenant James Barnhill, of San Augustine, Texas, through decades of radical historical change: civil war, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Klan, robber baron monopolies, destruction of the East Texas pine forests, and the rise of Populism, to name a few. The Silent Shore of Memory, John C. Kerr’s fifth novel, is historical fiction with the scope of biography. >>READ MORE
Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole
>> archive
New biographies focus on two presidents from Texas
Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and George H. W. Bush are the subjects of two important new biographies making national best-seller lists.
The Johnson book — Lady Bird and Lyndon: The Hidden Story of a Marriage That Made a President by Betty Boyd Caroli (Simon & Schuster, $29.99) — tells the story of their marriage and their political partnership, especially Lady Bird’s role in it. Caroli, author of First Ladies and The Roosevelt Women, spent six years poring over archives, letters, books, and other material and interviewing dozens of people close to the Johnsons. Her book is about 400 pages plus notes and index.
Jon Meacham, who wrote a Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Andrew Jackson, is the author of Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush (Random House, $35).
Meacham’s book — a comprehensive biography of the elder Bush — is about 600 pages plus another 200 pages of notes and index. The author interviewed Bush numerous times over a nine-year period as well as more than a hundred of Bush’s family, friends, aides, critics, and others. Meacham was granted access to Bush’s extensive diaries, as well as those of Barbara Bush.
Both books provide readable insider portraits of two of Texas’s most influential political families and how they helped shape and define American and world history in the twentieth century.
Sports Devotionals: Ed McMinn, a retired pastor in Georgia, is the author of a series of devotional books aimed at college sports fans. His “Daily Devotions for Die-Hard Fans” consist of about ninety college-specific two-page meditations based on sports stories and characters from the school.
So far, he’s done books featuring thirty-six universities, including five in Texas — Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, TCU and Baylor. They sell for $15.99.
Each story — most of them involving football, but also other sports — begins with a Bible verse followed by a sports anecdote from that school’s history and concludes with a Christian message and a brief summary of the religious point he is trying to make. For example, in his Baylor book, McMinn relates how Baylor players and fans celebrated winning the Big 12 Conference football championship in 2013 and then asks readers to imagine an even greater celebration in heaven.
Now McMinn has also started a series of “Daily Devotions for Die-Hard Kids,” also college-specific. Of the first six books in the series, three revolve around Texas colleges — Texas, Texas A&M and Baylor. The books for kids ages 6–12 include about seventy stories and sell for $13.99.
One of the stories in the book for Texas A&M kids concerns a basketball game when the Aggie radio announcer Dave South was thrown out of a game for making comments about the officiating. South became famous across the country because of the incident. McMinn’s message to kids is that you are already famous where it really counts — because God knows who you are.
Read more at die-hardfans.com.
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Glenn Dromgoole is co-author, with Carlton Stowers, of 101 Essential Texas Books Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.
>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Lit
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Simon & Schuster
Hardcover, 978-1-5011-0710-8 (also available as an audio book, an ebook, and on Audible), 448 pgs., $27.99
December 1, 2015
It’s 1916, Pancho Villa is raiding across the border, and Texas Ranger Hackberry Holland is searching for his long-lost son, Ishmael, a captain in the US Army, in Mexico, “a feral land, its energies as raw and ravenous as a giant predator that ingested the naïve and incautious.” Hackberry doesn’t find Ishmael this time, but he does run afoul of the Mexican Army and Arnold Beckman, an international arms dealer, escaping with a religious artifact that had been in Beckman’s possession, which may or may not be the Holy Grail.
House of the Rising Sun is an apocalyptic tale of addictions — alcohol, Morpheus, pain, love, power — which rob us of mercy, kindness, and human dignity. “I have nothing of value to impart,” Hackberry says. “My life has been dedicated to Pandemonium. That’s a place in hell John Milton wrote about. That also means I’m an authority on chaos and confusion and messing things up.” >>READ MORE
Texas Tech University Press
Hardcover, 978-0-89672-917-9, 256 pgs., $34.95, April 1, 2015
Bill Neal, writer, historian, and retired criminal attorney, gave a book talk in Canadian, Texas, a few years ago where a woman took him aside to quietly warn him not to “get into that Isaacs mess.” Naturally, as any proper writer, historian, and lawyerly type would be, Neal became curious. The result is Skullduggery, Secrets, and Murders: The 1894 Wells Fargo Scam that Backfired, the latest volume in Texas Tech University Press’s American Liberty and Justice Series, which is sort of ironic, because while there’s quite a lot of liberty, there’s precious little justice in this tale.
In November of 1894, George Isaacs and a motley collection of outlaws and wannabes attempted to swindle $25,000 out of Wells Fargo. >>READ MORE
Texas Books Make Great Gifts SHOP NOW!
INSIDE: Holiday GIFT GUIDE 2015
Looking for the perfect present for the Texas book lover in your life? We have armloads of ideas—from inspiration, romance to history and popular culture. Books make great gifts—especially Texas books! >>SHOP NOW
LONE STAR LISTENS interviews >> archive
Kay Ellington, Editor and Publisher
Mary Helen Specht:
Exploring the “post-western” TexasIt’s been a banner year for Austin-based author Mary Helen Specht. Her debut novel, Migratory Animals, was published in January and has been welcomed into the world with praise. Here’s just a smattering of the bookish bouquets—a January iBook Selection; a February Indie Next Selection; a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice; and on and on. She was named one of the Ten Authors to Watch by Texas Monthly, was selected as a keynoter at the West Texas Book Festival in her hometown of Abilene, and was invited to appear at the Texas Book Festival. We were pleased that we were able to interview her via email for this story.
LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Congratulations on an amazing year, Mary, and an amazing debut novel with Migratory Animals. But you’ve been quite workmanlike toward this goal, continually publishing short stories and essays — and winning awards — along the way. When did you officially “become a writer,” and how long have you been pursuing the craft?
MARY HELEN SPECHT: Thank you! It has been a great and wild year.
I first became serious about writing fiction in college, and spent about ten years during and after college writing short stories. One of the reasons I transitioned from short stories to the novel form was that I wanted to more fully explore how multiple lives intertwine and affect each other over time, to broaden my canvas, so to speak.
My first tattoo—inked on my eighteenth birthday during a trip to Austin—was of a stylized turtle, which, randomly chosen at the time, turned out to be appropriate. I am certainly the tortoise, not the hare. I revise a lot; I make a lot of mistakes; and I don’t give up.
What made you decide to be a writer? Was there an experience or a series of events that you can define as a turning point toward that path?
While I loved to read growing up—in fact, I sat in the living room with my parents pretending to read Tropic of Cancer long before I actually could—books made me want to live within them rather than to write them. I wanted to be Meg Murry in A Wrinkle in Time, playing with Bunsen burners after school and saving my father from the tesseract. >>READ MORE
Bookish Texas event highlights 12.6.2015
>> GO this week Michelle Newby, Contributing EditorTop Ten Texas Fiction Favorites 2015:
LSLL editors, readers weigh in on this year’s selections
As 2015 slips to a close the editors of Lone Star Literary Life would like to say thank you to all of the authors who have written books about our state or set in our state, but we’d like pay special recognition to our Favorite Texas Fiction of 2015.
We winnowed down an internal list and placed a couple of versions of it out on our social media as a survey. To our pleasure, the lists reached almost 2,000 people and hundreds weighed in.
The selections reflect the diversity and range of the state, with settings from the Panhandle to the Mexican border. The ten authors include (by happenstance) five men and five women, and they range in ages from thirty-five-year old Keija Parssinen to seventy-one-year old Carlos Nicholás Flores. >>READ MORE
PATRICK DEAREN
The Big Drift: A NovelTCU Press, trade paper, 978-0-87565-570-3; 192 pp., $22.95 (also available in e-book and audio book).
The Big Drift begins in the Middle Concho of West Texas during a blizzard in December 1884. Zeke Boles, a black cowhand and former slave, is running from a hangman’s noose when he he stumbles across Will Brite, a white cowhand pinned under his horse and caught up in the barbed white of a drift line. This unlikely pair, brought together by chance, learns that they have more in common than that which separates them and they must depend upon each other for their very lives as each seeks redemption for his part in the memories they are each trying to outrun. Author Patrick Dearen is interviewed here.
MARY HELEN SPECHTMigratory Animals: A Novel
Harper Perennial, Paperback/Deckle Edge, 978-0062346032, 320 pp., $14.99 (also available in e-book)
Mary Helen Specht’s debut novel unflinchingly tackles the hard stuff. Specht employs five points of view to tell the story of a group of best friends from college who have each come to a crossroads. Flannery, prodigal daughter, sister, friend, and flame, is “on the lam” in Nigeria from a difficult childhood and needy family. She has been there for five years and has built a career and fallen in love with a local. When Flannery returns to Austin to complete research that will allow her to secure funding so she can implement that research in Nigeria, she finally has to choose between her two lives. Specht is interviewed in our December 6, 2015, issue.
ANTONIO RUIZ-CAMACHONew York: Scribner, Hardcover, 978-147684960, $23.00 (also available as ebook)
Antonio Ruiz-Camacho tells the stories of the wealthy, privileged, cultured, and ambitious Arteaga family of Mexico City. He has an uncanny ear for the prattle of pampered children trying adulthood on for size and for conveying their sheltered lives. It turns out to also be the year of kidnappings when the patriarch fails to come home from the office one day – the year the blinders come off. This collection of linked short fiction follows the diminished fortunes of the children and grandchildren who are forced to flee the country for their own safety. Author Antonio Ruiz-Camacho is interviewed here.
Keija ParssinenThe Unraveling of Mercy Louis
New York: Harper
Hardcover, 978-0-06-231909-8; also available in ebook
320 pages, $25.99
Port Sabine is a small derelict refinery town on the Gulf Coast of East Texas, economically depressed and environmentally despoiled, beset by class divisions, small minds, and smaller hearts. Port Sabine’s claims to fame are a refinery explosion and the lone bright spot—the girls’ high-school basketball team and its star, Mercy Louis. Mercy lives on the bayou’s edge with her grandmother, Evelia, a harsh, unforgiving woman, a member of a “Holy Roller” church who has visions and spouts prophecy of the imminent Rapture The last day of school brings a disturbing discovery, and as summer unfolds and the police investigate, every girl becomes a suspect. When Mercy collapses on the opening night of the season, Evelia prophesies that she is only the first to fall, and soon, other girls are afflicted by the mysterious condition, sending the town into a tailspin. Keija Parssinen has conjured a smartly plotted, fast-paced Gothic brew of superstition, fear, jealousy, conspiracy, politics, money, sex, love, and misogyny. Author Keija Parssinen is interviewed here.
Jeff GuinnBuffalo Trail: A Novel of the American West
G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Hardcover, 978-0-399-16542-9 (also available as ebook and audiobook), 432 pgs., $27.00 (also available as ebook and audiobook),
The follow-up to Glorious, a New York Times best-seller, Buffalo Trail is author and investigative journalist Jeff Guinn’ssecond volume in his American West trilogy. Cash McClendon has departed Arizona Territory in a hurry and washed up in Dodge City, keeping company with Bat Masterson and Billy Dixon, learning the trade of the “hidemen” who follow the great buffalo herds, trying to earn enough money to get back to Gabrielle, his lady-love, whom we’ve met in Glorious. The buffalo have been hunted out of existence in Kansas, so Dixon is putting together a large hunting party to follow the herds into Indian Territory. Simultaneously, Quanah Parker of the Comanche is attempting to put together a massive war party, including the Cheyenne and Kiowa, to convince the white men to stay on their side of the line. When these two groups collide in the Texas panhandle, it will be known historically as the Second Battle of Adobe Walls. Author Jeff Guinn is interviewed here.
AMANDA EYRE WARD The Same SkyBallantine, Hardcover, January 20, 2015, 978-0-553-39050-6, 288 pp., $25.00 (also available in e-book and audiobook versions)
In The Same Sky, Amanda Eyre Ward tells the stories of Alice and Carla, each striving for their personal version of the much-vaunted American dream. The author deftly conveys the unique voices of these two very different characters, moving smoothly back and forth between the privileged forty-one-year-old Alice and the desperately poor Carla. The author spent a year researching and visiting children in immigration centers in California and Texas, listening to their stories.
Cliff HudderPretty Enough for You: A Novel
Texas Review Press, 978-1-68003-038-9, 344 pgs., $22.95 (also available in e-book edition)
Pretty Enough for You is Cliff Hudder’s rollicking carnival of a debut novel. Harrison Bent is a self-absorbed, adolescent middle-aged ne’er-do-well immigration attorney in love with a twentysomething paralegal, married to a Filipino au pair who needed citizenship, with a girlfriend-stalker, whose philosophy is go-along-to-get-along. Playing hooky from responsibility, marinating in rum-Vicodin-Xanax cocktails and lying to his therapist, Bent is assigned a new case, and then the shenanigans begin. Author Cliff Hudder will be interviewed in Lone Star Lit’s December 27 issue.
Attica LockeNew York: Harper
Hardcover, 978-0-06-225940-0
432 pages, $26.99
Pleasantville takes place in Houston’s historical planned community for African-Americans of means and is Attica Locke’s (writer and producer of the Fox series Empire) sequel to the many-award-nominated Black Water Rising — with environmental plaintiff’s attorney Jay Porter, this time dealing with the death of his wife, single fatherhood, inertia, and a break-in at his law office that occurs the same night as an election, the same night the girl goes missing. Author Attica Locke is interviewed here.
Flores, Carlos NicolásSex As a Political Condition: A Border Novel
Texas Tech University Press
9780896729308, paperback, 406 pgs., $34.95
Sex As A Political Condition is the newest smartly designed title in Texas Tech University Press’s Americas series, and is professor and activist Carlos Nicolás Flores’s latest novel. Sex As a Political Condition is about history, family, politics, economics, friendship, and religion. Honoré del Castillo runs the family curio shop in the backwater border town of Escandón, Texas, and fears dying in front of his TV like some six-pack José in his barrio. Encouraged by his friend Trotsky, he becomes politically active—smuggling refugees, airlifting guns to Mexican revolutionaries, negotiating with radical Chicana lesbians—but the naked truths he faces are more often naked than true and constantly threaten to unman him. When a convoy loaded with humanitarian aid bound for Nicaragua pulls into Escandón, his journey to becoming a true revolutionary hero begins, first on Escandón’s international bridge and then on the highways of Mexico. But not until both the convoy and Honoré’s mortality and manhood are threatened in Guatemala does he finally confront the complications of his love for his wife and daughter, his political principles, the stench of human fear, and ultimately what it means to be a principled man in a screwed-up world. Author Carlos Nicolás Flores is interviewed here.
Love Me Back: A NovelNew York: Doubleday
Hardcover, 978-0-385538077
224 pages, $23.95
September 16, 2014
New York: Anchor Paperback 978-0-345807137
224 pages, $15.95
Love Me Back is “5 Under 35” honoree and Rona Jaffe award winner Merritt Tierce’s debut novel. Marie is a young twentysomething woman who lands a coveted waitressing job at an upscale Uptown Dallas restaurant. Serving herself up night after night, Marie is mired in a miasma of hedonistic nihilism, the drugs and alcohol and musical beds her clawing for oblivion. Containing no such thing as plot or pacing, the narrative jumping back and forth through time, Love Me Back reads more like a series of linked short stories. Her language in Marie’s first-person account is stark, potent, sparing nothing, with intermittent injections of sardonic humor. Author Merritt Tierce is interviewed here.
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Humanities Texas Book Fair, Austin, Dec. 12
Love reading? Coffee and treats? Holiday cheer? Looking for the perfect present for that bibliophile on your gift list?
Then come by the Byrne-Reed House (1410 Rio Grande Street, Austin) for Humanities Texas’s seventh annual Holiday Book Fair. On Saturday, Dec. 12 from 10 am– 1 pm, talented Texas authors will visit with holiday shoppers and sign copies of their latest books, available for purchase at a discounted price.
Noteworthy authors participating in this year’s festivities include H. W. Brands, Ray Benson, Jan Jarboe Russell, Katherine Howe, Brandon Caro, Don Tate, Karen Olsson, Kirk Lynn, Sarah Cortez, Louisa Hall, Steven Moss, Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, Michael Barnes, Jacqueline Kelly, Chris Barton, David Gaines, Elizabeth Harris, Andrew J. Torget, Dave Oliphant, Javier Auyero, Chuck Bailey, Nikki Loftin, and Light Townsend Cummins. >>READ MORE
Wimberly Book Festival, June 2016, accepting author applications
According to DEAR Texas director B. Alan Bourgeois, a new book festival is scheduled June 11, 2016 in Wimberley, Texas.
The Wimberley Book Festival is being produced by Dear Texas, Inc., a not-for-profit organization that promotes reading for all ages. Applications are now being accepted. Authors should email info@DearTexas.info to receive a formal application.
Christian romance novelist
Becky Wade on her approach to fictionBecky Wade, Dallas-based inspirational novelist with Bethany House, discusses her path to publishing—and advice to writers. Wade is the Carol Award, INSPY Award, and Inspirational Reader’s Choice Award winning author of contemporary Christian romances My Stubborn Heart, Undeniably Yours, Meant to Be Mine, and A Love Like Ours as well as Love Is in the Details and The Proposal, out fall 2015. >> LISTEN NOW (mp3)
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NOW ON TOUR: FICTION
Deceived with L. A. Starkey
VISIT WITH LAURIE DEC. 8–22
Tuesday, December 8 – All For the Love of the Word – promo
Wednesday, December 9 – Crazy Booksellers – promo
Thursday, December 10 – Texas Book-aholic – promo
Friday, December 11 – All For the Love of the Word – review
Monday, December 14 -Blogging For the Love of Authors and Their Books author interview
Wednesday, December 16 – Hall Ways – promo
Friday, December 18 – Bookishjessp review
Monday, December 21 – Because This is My Life, Y’all review
Tuesday, December 22 – Missus Gonzo – review
Wednesday, December 23 – The Page Unbound review
CONTINUING ON TOUR: FICTION
Lucky Shot by B. J. Daniels
VISIT WITH B. J. THROUGH DEC. 11
Monday, Dec. 7 – Missus Gonzo – review
Wednesday, Dec. 9 – Texas Book-aholic – review
Friday, Dec. 11 – Blogging For the Love of Authors and Their Books promo
CONTINUING ON TOUR: TEXAS COOKING
The Whole Enchilada by Angelina LaRue
VISIT WITH ANGELINA THROUGH DEC. 9
Sunday, Dec. 6 – Because This is My Life, Y’all review
Monday, Dec. 7 – Secret Asian Girl review
Tuesday, Dec. 8 – Missus Gonzo review
Wednesday, Dec. 9 – Book Crazy Gals promo
CONTINUING ON TOUR: FICTION
Murder at Peacock Mansion by Judy Alter
VISIT WITH JUDY THROUGH DEC. 9
Sun., Dec. 6 – Texas Book Lover author interview
Mon., Dec. 7 – Because This is My Life, Y’all review
Tues., Dec. 8 – Hall Ways – review
Wed., Dec. 9 – Texas Book-aholic – review
CONTINUING ON TOUR:
FOR CHILDRENDear Diary: My Brother Died Today
by Suzanne Gene Courtney
VISIT WITH SUZANNE THROUGH DEC. 9
Sunday, Dec. 6 – Book Crazy Gals promo
Monday, Dec.7 – The Page Unbound promo
Tuesday, Dec. 8 – Missus Gonzo review
Wednesday, Dec. 9 – Blogging For the Love of Authors and Their Books promo
RECENTLY ON TOUR: FICTION
The Door of the Heart
by Diana Finfrock Farrar
VISIT WITH DIANA THROUGH DEC. 5
Dec 6 – Hall Ways review
Dec 7 – Bookishjessp review
COMING UP ON TOUR: FICTION
House of the Rising Sun
by James Lee Burke
VISIT WITH JIM DEC. 13-24
RECENTLY ON TOUR: FICTION
Wyoming Rugged by Diana Palmer
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