POETRY
David M. Parsons

Reaching for Longer Water: Selected & New

Texas Review Press

Paperback, 978-1680030327, 200 pgs., $12.95

Reviewed by Mary Newport, Norman Transcript

Dave Parsons, 2011 Texas State Poet Laureate, visited our neighbor state to the north last fall for readings at the Full Circle Bookstore in Oklahoma and the Depot in Norman, signing copies of his Reaching for Longer Water: Selected & New. We’re reprising Mary Newport’s review, which originally appeared in the Norman Transcript in Oct 2015, with permission of the publisher.

Reaching for Longer Water is Parsons’s sixth book of poetry, containing both some old favorites and a large body of fresh work. A great deal of the subject matter is about turning the prosaic into the poetic. Childhood is viewed through the nurturing sunshine of Scout meetings led by a smiling father figure. Canoeing becomes a dark ritual of water and wind. The town of Austin is transformed into an island of sensations rising from the sea of time. >>READ MORE

Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole

>> archiveEpic novel probes early days of Texas oil

Titans, the fourth Texas epic from San Antonio novelist Leila Meacham, features twins separated at birth who find their lives intertwined in the early days of Texas oil (Grand Central Publishing, $26 hardcover).

Nathan Holloway is content with life on the family wheat farm near Gainesville until a wealthy stranger from Dallas arrives, claiming to be his birth father.

Samantha Gordon is the only child of a well-to-do ranching couple near Fort Worth. Although she is very happy with her adoptive parents, Samantha naturally has questions about where she came from. A mysterious letter from an Oklahoma doctor sets her on a quest to know more.

Meanwhile, Texas is anticipating an oil boom. The story is set in 1900, six years after oil was discovered in Corsicana and a year before the first big boom would blow in at Spindletop, near Beaumont. Nathan and Samantha, at age twenty, become major figures in an effort by a Dallas company to drill for oil on the Gordons’ ranch property. Love, lies, secrets, loyalty, betrayal and triumph all come into play as the story unfolds.

Meacham keeps the reader moving quickly through the 594-page saga as she did with her earlier Texas epics — Roses (2010), Tumbleweeds (2012), and Somerset (2014). I have enjoyed all four books, reading each in just two or three days, and they’re all in the 500- to 600-page range. Her novels are well-researched family dramas, packed with numerous twists, turns, and surprises. With Mother’s Day just around the corner, Titans might be on the wish list of moms who are Meacham fans.

Meacham, aged seventy-seven, wrote Roses after retiring as a high school English teacher. Back in the 1980s she penned three romance novels, and now that she has become a best-selling author those three earlier books are being reissued starting this summer. Meanwhile, she is at work on another novel set in Paris (France, not Texas) during World War II.

Meacham will be presented the A. C. Greene Award, given annually to a distinguished Texas author, at the 2016 West Texas Book Festival in Abilene in September.

Texas women: Noted Austin author Sarah Bird pays tribute to Texas women in an essay published as a small gift book, A Love Letter to Texas Women (University of Texas Press, $16.95 hardcover).

“Whatever end of the political spectrum you want to come at her from,” writes Bird, “there is something undeniably special about the Texas Woman. “It doesn’t matter whether or not you believe you are special,” she continues, “because the rest of the world does.”

Lady Bird Johnson and Laura Bush get specific recognition, as well as Ann Richards, Molly Ivins, Barbara Jordan, the writer’s classmates at a Catholic school who made her feel welcome as a newcomer, the friendly ladies at a neighborhood beauty salon, and women who teach their men to dance.

* * * * *

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

UPCOMING CONFERENCES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

Houston Writers Guild presents three-day annual conference April 29–May 1, with authors Ford, Hutchins

The 2016 Houston Writers Guild annual conference will be held April 29–May 1, 2016 at the Marriott Houston Westchase, 2900 Briarpark Drive, Houston, Texas 77042. Registration and event times vary each day.

Friday night, April 29, the HWG Press will hold a Book Launch/Cocktail Reception. Conference attendees will be entertained by guest speaker Jay Asher. Light hors d’oeuvres will be served along with cash bar. The main event on April 30 will begin with keynote speaker Jamie Ford, followed by one-hour breakout sessions. In addition, there will be an opportunity for writers to pitch their work, in ten-minute sessions with agents and editors. >>READ MORE

Dallas Book Festival,
Apr. 30, Expands With
Best-selling Novelists, Award Winners

Several nationally prominent authors — including best-selling novelists and winners of both a Pulitzer and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize —  are headed to the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library for an expanded Dallas Book Festival.

Among those just announced for the free, all-day, April 30, 2016, event:

Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, which won the 2015 Dayton prize in nonfiction; Lawrence Wright, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower; Jessica Knoll, best-selling author of  Luckiest Girl Alive; Historian/analyst Andrew Bacevich, who is about to release America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History; Adam Mansbach, famous for that picture book that is known in its polite form as Seriously, Just Go to Sleep; Ghostwriter to the stars David Ritz, whose books include Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin, and Curtis Sittenfeld, the American Wife author who is about to release her newest book, Eligible, in April.

Local authors taking part will include Karen Blumenthal, Nancy Churnin, Tim Cowlishaw, AG Ford, Sarah Hepola, Don Tate and Merritt Tierce.  >>READ MORE

• Ecco, 978-0-06-242970-4, hardcover (also available as an ebook, an audio book, and on Audible), 208 pgs., $25.99

  April 12, 2016

  “Houston was always flooding, the whole city built atop paved wetlands. The storm kept the sky dark, and the streetlights glowed through the morning. I stepped into my rubber boots and splashed to the barbecue shack around the corner.”

  When Charlotte Ford returns to her apartment with her brisket and beer, Detective Ash is waiting on the landing to tell her that Danielle, her friend since high school, has been found bludgeoned to death in a seedy motel room. Danielle and her mother, Sally, have been estranged for years but Sally has recently contacted Charlotte, offering her a $1,000 bribe for Danielle’s phone number, so she could tell Danielle about an inheritance. Charlotte has met Danielle for a drink just a few days before her death to tell her about Sally and offer her half the money.  >>READ MORE