Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,
Contributing Editor
Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole
>> archive
Texas, Oklahoma battled over a bridge in 1931
Have you ever heard of the war between Texas and Oklahoma in 1931? Not a football game, but a full-fledged armed conflict over a 75-cent toll bridge at the beginning of what would become the Great Depression. Dallas author Rusty Williams tells the story in The Red River Bridge War: A Texas-Oklahoma Border Battle (Texas A&M University Press, $29.95 hardcover).
The war, says Williams, “was a serious clash between two eccentric state governors, each with his eye on national office” — Ross “Fat Boy” Sterling of Texas and Oklahoma’s pistol-packing populist “Alfalfa Bill” Murray. Murray made a serious run for the Democratic presidential nomination the next year, and for a while it looked like he might win, eventually losing to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“Today, more than 80 years later, the Red River Bridge War has passed almost entirely from living memory into the realm of folklore, yet the full story of the conflict has never been told,” Williams writes. Well, now it has. And it’s quite a story that made the front pages of newspapers around the country for two weeks that hot summer of 1931.
Cowboy songs: Texas Tech University Press has issued a second edition of Glenn Ohrlin’s The Hell-Bound Train: A Cowboy Songbook ($24.95 paperback). The book was first published in 1974 by the University of Illinois Press.
Most of the cowboy songs are from the era of 1875–1925. Ohrlin, who died in 2015, was a working cowboy, rodeo rider, singer, and storyteller. Ohrlin tells stories about the songs and includes the music to more than seventy of them, including “My Home’s in Montana,” “The Texas Rangers,” “Ten Thousand Cattle,” “The Cowboy’s Prayer,” and Larry Chittenden’s “The Cowboy’s Christmas Ball.”
Poems: James R. Dennis, one of the three friends who write delightful mysteries together under the name of Miles Arcenaux, is also a poet as well as a Dominican friar and a lawyer. He recently sent me a signed and numbered copy of a fine limited letterpress edition of his poetry, called Correspondence in D Minor, published by Stephen F. Austin University Press.
One of the poems, “Isaac, To His Father,” has the biblical Isaac reflecting on the time when he and his father, Abraham, climbed the mountain to offer a sacrifice to the Lord, with Isaac discovering to his dismay that he was the intended living sacrifice. He doesn’t think back fondly on the day. “From my viewpoint,” he says, “this single-minded obedience was a bit less than kind.” The book includes thirty-six poems in sixty-six pages.
Glenn Dromgoole’s latest book is West Texas StoriesContact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.
>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life
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LONE STAR LISTENS interviews >> archive
Kay Ellington, Editor and Publisher
1.22.2017 National book award winner Kimberly Willis Holt on stories that resonate with young readers
National Book Award winner and Texas Institute of Letters member Kimberly Willis Holt was born in a Florida hurricane, lived all over with her military family, grew up in Louisiana, and has spent her adult years in Texas. She spoke with us via email about her influences, her writing, and her newest title for young adults, Blooming at the Texas Sunrise Motel, coming out in March.
LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: You grew up in a military family and lived in Guam and France, as well as several Southern locales. What was that experience like, and how do you think it influenced your writing?
KIMBERLY WILLIS HOLT: When I was young I didn’t like moving and having to make new friends, but I appreciate my military childhood now. Growing up I had to learn to interact with all kinds of people in many different situations. Over the years I’ve met a lot of folks, young and old, who are resilient because of their military childhood.
Also I think I have compassion for others because I knew what it was like to be a new kid under the judgment microscope. Compassion and acceptance are reoccurring themes throughout most of my books.
When did you first start writing stories?
June 15, 1994. I didn’t have a computer but I sat at a table on my screened porch and wrote by hand. I remember that date because I looked at the calendar and made a commitment to finally go after my dream. >>READ MORE
Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events
Bookish Texas event highlights 1.22.2017
>> GO this week Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor
SAN ANTONIO Sat., Jan. 28 The Twig Book Shop, Ben Longoria reads and signs American Monsters, 11AM
News Briefs 1.22.17
Bookstore Briefs
New independent or chain bookstores don’t come along often these days, and Lone Star Literary Life looks to share the word with our readers when they do.
Interabang Books to open in Dallas in May
We’ve learned that this spring in Dallas, Nancy Perot (daughter of Ross Perot), Jeremy Ellis (longtime manager of Brazos Bookstore in Houston), and Lori Feathers plan to open Interabang Books in Dallas. The 5,000-square-foot store will carry more than 12,000 titles in a variety of categories, with a focus on fiction, children’s books, and creative nonfiction. >>READ MORE
Burrowing Owl Books opens on the square in Canyon
As reported to us earlier this month, independent Burrowing Owl Books has opened at 419 16th Street, in Canyon. We’ll report more next month, after we get to visit in person—but we understand it’s a family-run enterprise under the ownership of Dallas and Todd Bell and will feature new, used, and children’s books.
It’s especially welcome news, following the departure last year of longtime community and college book retailer Buffalo Bookstore.
Laredo lands another bookstore
Book Warehouse of Laredo will open in March in the Outlet Shoppes of Laredo. With nineteen discount stores across the country from Auburn, Washington, to Daytona Beach, Florida, Book Warehouse is opening a new location in Laredo in conjunction with the opening of the Laredo Outlets. >>READ MORE
Japanese bookstore chain coming to North Texas
Kinokuniya, one of the largest bookstore chains in Japan, is coming to North Texas—opening just one store but two. The chain’s flagship Texas store plans to open in Carrollton in late-January, and the other location in Plano in February. >>READ MORE
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Lone Star Literary Life’s Bookish Tour of Texas, January 2017
A chilly, gray mid-January provided the perfect opportunity to spend some time in our favorite cold-weather literary haunts: museums and libraries. The Lone Star Lit team trekked from Abilene to San Angelo in West Texas, starting out with a visit to the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature in downtown Abilene, to kick off the NCCIL’s 20th anniversary year.
As executive director Debbie Lillick (below, center) explains, the center will honor its twenty-year milestone beginning with an overview exhibition of the work of William Joyce (whose Man in the Moon appears in the illustration below) and continuing with returning featured illustrators and authors throughout the year.
Joyce, whose collaboration with then Abilene mayor Gary McCaleb led to the founding of the NCCIL in 1997, spoke yesterday at the center. Joyce’s works remain on display in the main gallery through early March.
Joyce, whose collaboration with then Abilene mayor Gary McCaleb led to the founding of the NCCIL in 1997, spoke yesterday at the center. Joyce’s works remain on display in the main gallery through early March.
Lone Star Lit also paid a visit to the newly opened of the Abilene Public Library South Branch which moved last November to the Mall of Abilene at 4310 Buffalo Gap Rd.. The library, which has entrances from the mall corridor as well as from the outside on the J C Penney side, welcomes patrons to enjoy reading areas, private meeting and study rooms, a kid’s area, and more, all in a brightly designed space funded by the City of Abilene and the Friends of the Library.
Next on our tour was San Angelo, home of the late Elmer Kelton. Author of more than forty books over five decades, Kelton was voted Best Western Author of All-Time by the Western Writers of America before his death in 2009. His longtime home city honors his legacy in numerous ways, including a bronze statue prominently displayed in the new home (since 2011) at the Stephens Central Library at 33 W. Beauregard Avenue.
This is not your average downtown public library: a stunning example of adaptive reuse, in the two-and-a-half-story former Hemphill-Wells department store space, it offers a welcoming haven for book lovers and researchers as well as a treat for the eye. >>READ MORE
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