Contributing Editor

TEXAS HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY

Jane Eppinga

Henry Ossian Flipper: West Point’s First Black Graduate

Wild Horse Press

Paperback, 234 pages, with b/w images, 978-1-68179-006-0, $19.95

September 21, 2015 (originally published 1996)

Reviewed by Si Dunn

In 1877, 2nd Lieutenant Henry Ossian Flipper, the first African-American graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, was assigned, predictably, to the 10th U.S. Cavalry, one of two black units known as “Buffalo soldiers.”

Unpredictably, Flipper survived both the harsh racial criticisms and a devastating court martial that ended his young army career. He went on to become a versatile and noteworthy figure in late nineteenth-century American history, as author Jane Eppinga ably demonstrates in this recently updated edition of her book first published in 1996. >>READ MORE

Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole

>> archivePhotographs capture underwater beauty in Gulf

Photographer Jesse Cancelmo provides nearly two hundred color photos of underwater life in the Gulf of Mexico in his gorgeous coffee-table book, Glorious Gulf of Mexico: Life Below the Blue (Texas A&M University Press, $30 flexbound).

The 600,000 square miles of the international gulf connects five U.S. states, six Mexican states, and Cuba. Cancelmo said he hopes his book might demonstrate “how much sense it makes for each of the three countries interconnected by this magnificent body of water to work together to preserve and protect it for future generations.”

Cancelmo’s photos capture the stunning and rarely seen underwater beauty of the gulf, with sections devoted to the Mexican gulf waters, the northern coast of Cuba, the Dry Tortugas of Florida, the area from middle Florida to Alabama and Mississippi, and the gulf waters of Texas and Louisiana.

Civil War years: Lucy Pier Stevens was twenty-one when she arrived for a visit at her aunt’s farm near Bellville, Texas, on Christmas Day 1859. A resident of Ohio, she would spend the entire Civil War in Texas.

Another Year Finds Me in Texas: The Civil War Diary of Lucy Pier Stevens by Vicki Adams Tongate (University of Texas Press, $29.95 hardcover, 376 pages) offers the rare insights of a young woman from the north who couldn’t go home.

Her diary covers the years 1863–65, with introductory and concluding chapters by Tongate about Lucy’s life before and after the diary.

Historical novel: Carroll Mart Sinclair of Tyler has written a historical novel, Tree of Justice? (Early Sundown Studio, $15.95 paperback) based on his own family’s experiences in Centerville, Texas, in 1919.

Most of the book deals with the day-to-day life of poor, white, hard-working farming families in East Texas, focusing on two families in particular — the Dorsetts and the Sinclairs. The Dorsetts travel by wagon from Alto to Centerville to earn money picking cotton for Jim Sinclair, and the two families become good friends and look forward to being together during cotton-picking season the next year.

But, in the last forty pages of the 174-page novel, the story turns tragic when a family member  is murdered — and the book’s title (Tree of Justice?) comes into play. The oak tree, says author Sinclair, stood for about seventy-five years in front of the Leon County courthouse in Centerville before it was removed in the 1960s.

Read more at treeofjustice.com. The book is available online in paperback and e-book editions.

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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

Lone Star Lit welcomes Kristine Hall to Lone Star Book Blog Tours; thanks to outgoing blog coordinator Pope

Lone Star Literary Life makes a change to its team lineup this month with the arrival ofKristine Hall as book tour coordinator for Lone Star Book Blog Tours. Hall, a professional reviewer for numerous publicity services, authors, and publishers, is a graduate of Texas A&M University and earned her master’s degree in library science from Sam Houston State University. She is an active member of the Texas Library Association and a proud member of the Grammar Police. Her book reviews can be found on her blog, Hall Ways.

We bid farewell, with great thanks for her service during our first year, to our inaugural blog tour coordinator, librarian Tabatha Pope of Spring. Pope remains on the team as a tour blogger.

If you blog about Texas books and authors and would like to apply to participate in Lone Star Book Blog Tours—for the joy of reading, and free advance copies of new books in your interest areas—contact Kristine Hall at  kristinethall@yahoo.com.

We’ll also be officially rolling out our new blog tour and publicity site next week. Take a sneak peek at www.LoneStarPublicity.com.

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