Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole
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Texas nature, literary sites
Explore Texas: A Nature Travel Guide by Mary O. Parker, with color photographs by Jeff Parker and foreword by Carter Smith, is an attractive and well-organized field guide to about one hundred nature-oriented sites and events that give visitors a feel for the biodiversity of the Texas landscape and ecology. Published by Texas A&M University Press ($28 flexbound), the 318-page book will make you want to hop in the car and go exploring.
The destinations are presented by region, beginning with the Big Bend and continuing through the Gulf Coast, Hill Country, Panhandle Plains, Piney Woods, Prairies and Lakes, and South Texas Plains.
With at least eleven (and as many as twenty) entries for each region, there should be something interesting to see within easy driving distance of nearly everyone in the state. Just in the Panhandle-Plains, for example, there’s a working dude ranch, a fall foliage festival in Canadian, the Palo Duro Canyon State Park, the Fort Griffin State Historic Site, the San Angelo Nature Center, and more.
In the Hill Country, explore the Cave without a Name, the Lost Maples State Natural Area, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, the Balcones Songbird Festival, and about fifteen other sites and events. In the Prairies and Lakes region, there’s the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge in Eagle Lake, the Ennis Bluebonnet Trails, the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge, and the Eagle Fest at Emory, among others.
And so on. “With 268,596 miles of ecological elbow room,” as author Mary Parker puts it, there is plenty to see, and Explore Texas puts it all at your fingertips.
Literary tour: Another way to explore Texas is featured in Literary Texas: A Guide to the State’s Bookish Destinations by the editors of Lone Star Literary Life online — Kay Ellington, Barbara Brannon, and Michelle Newby.
The 124-page paperback (Bookadelphia.com, $9.95) tells what to see and do on a literary tour of the top 10 “bookish” sites in the state, beginning with No. 1 Austin and continuing on through Houston, Dallas, Abilene, Midland-Odessa, San Antonio, Fort Worth, El Paso, Denton, and Waco.
The editors also list the ten most popular bookstores in Texas (as voted by Lone Star Literary Life readers) as well as a month-by-month calendar of major Texas literary events.
Lone Star Literary Life describes itself as “the weekly online newspaper for all things bookish in Texas.” A new edition is e-mailed to subscribers (it’s free) every Sunday afternoon, or just check it out at lonestarliterary.com.
Glenn Dromgoole is co-author of 101 Essential Texas Books. Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.
>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life
G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Hardcover, 978-0-399-17634-0 (also available as an ebook, and on Audible), 448 pgs., $26.00
June 7, 2016
Fictional Murfee, Texas, is the seat of fictional Big Bend County (“where there’s more blood in the ground than water”), situated on the very real border with Mexico, where desperation and ambition meet avarice, hubris, and drug-fueled insanity. Seventeen-year-old Caleb Ross desperately wants to escape no-account little Murfee, not least because he believes his father is responsible for his mother’s disappearance. Quiet and perceptive, Caleb feels guilty and cowardly because he hasn’t confronted his father, and he’s wound tight from living with a human rattlesnake.
Caleb’s father is Sheriff Stanford “Judge” Ross, a hard, arrogant, murderous man who rules Big Bend County like a feudal estate. People in his orbit have a habit of disappearing and/or dying. Rookie deputy Chris Cherry is a former high school football star, reluctantly returned to Murfee after a devastating knee injury. When Chris discovers a body on a remote ranch, he and Caleb eventually join forces, and as the Sheriff’s secrets emerge, the whole Walking Tall scenario in Big Bend County begins to disintegrate. >>READ MORE
Alfred A. Knopf
Hardcover, 978-1-101-87561-2 (also available as an ebook, audio book, and on Audible), 320 pgs., $26.95
July 19, 2016
“Never say never. Weird things happen in Texas.” —Colleen
Matt and Beth Kelly are a young married couple in Washington, D.C. Matt, who dressed up as Ronald Reagan as a child and has always known he wanted to run for office, is an ambitious lawyer in the Obama White House, but he’s frustrated that his career isn’t progressing as quickly as he’d like. Beth, a former editorial assistant for Vanity Fair, is a writer for a local website devoted to the trivial and scandalous social lives of the politicos, who feels profoundly dislocated in DC’s “hierarchy of jealousy,” invisible because she doesn’t work in politics.
Jimmy and Ashleigh Dillon are a young married couple from Texas rising fast through DC’s political ranks. Jimmy is young and charismatic; he golfs with the president, and perks, power, and plums fall into his lap. Ashleigh is a Southern belle whose outgoing personality and beauty-pageant looks are Jimmy’s perfect complement. When the Dillons return to Texas, Jimmy is recruited to run for the Railroad Commission and he summons Matt to manage his campaign. The Kellys decamp for Sugar Land (“where life is sweet”) to help Jimmy turn Texas blue. >>READ MORE
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