Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,
Contributing Editor
Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole
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Author relates colorful story of Austin club
Austin writer Donna Marie Miller tells the colorful story of one of Austin’s most famous eating, drinking and dancing establishments in The Broken Spoke: Austin’s Legendary Honky-Tonk (Texas A&M University Press, $24.95 hardcover).
The Broken Spoke opened on Nov. 10, 1964, at what was then south of the Austin city limits. Miller traces the Broken Spoke’s history with sections devoted to the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, and up to the present. Through the years it has hosted every big name on the burgeoning Austin music scene and many of the Nashville stars as well.
The book includes color photos of Broken Spoke founder James White with many of the entertainers and celebrities who have performed at or visited the club. They include Bob Wills, Hank Thompson, Willie Nelson, Darrell Royal, Lady Bird Johnson, George Strait, Robert Duvall, Kris Kristofferson, Ann Richards, Dolly Parton, Ray Benson, Kinky Friedman, Ray Price, George W. Bush, and Greg Abbott.
Besides the cold beer and the dance bands booked regularly, the Broken Spoke also became known for its chicken-fried steak.
Breakfast in Texas: Veteran Texas cookbook author Terry Thompson-Anderson’s latest is Breakfast in Texas: Recipes for Elegant Brunches, Down-Home Classics & Local Favorites (University of Texas Press, $35 hardcover). Beautifully illustrated with color photos by Sandy Wilson, the book is divided into seven sections:
- Breakfast and brunch libations.
- Crack an egg: simple, classic, and fancy preparations.
- Heavenly, syrupy pancakes, French toast, and waffles.
- Meat lover’s breakfast and brunch dishes.
- Breakfast and brunch from the bounty of the waters.
- Two enticing vegan breakfast/brunch menus and great sides for any breakfast.
- Tasty pastries for breakfast and brunch.
With the enticing recipes and gorgeous color photos, this is a book to savor and drool over, even if you never crack an egg.
Comfort food: The Big Country Cookbook by Tiffany Harelik (Abilene Christian University Press, $24.99 paperback) features favorite recipes from more than ffity cooks in the Abilene area known as the Big Country. The emphasis is on yummy, tried-and-true, down-home comfort food. A good many of the recipes have been passed down from parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and remain popular with a new generation of cooks.
You’ll find chicken and dumplings, corn casserole, roasted sweet potatoes, fried chicken, spaghetti, slow cooker enchiladas, chicken fried steak, and lots of desserts (28 of them). The book, which came out this month, will be spotlighted at this year’s West Texas Book Festival in Abilene in September.
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
Two Texas publishers snag Ippy Awards
In the 2016 IPPY awards announced last week, presented by the Independent Book Publishers’ Association, two Texas books have garnered awards.
Fiction With Characters Or Topics Addressing Religion
SILVER: Foy: On the Road to Lost, by Gordon Atkinson (Material Media)
Travel Essay Books
SILVER: Vagabonding with Kids: How One Couple Embraced an Unconventional Life to Work Remotely and Show Their Kids the World, by A.K. Turner (Brown Books Publishing Group)
(Information from The Independent Book Publishers’ Association)
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Lake Union Publishing
E-book, 978-1-5053-5334-3, (also available in paperback, and on Audible), 248 pgs., $14.95
April 11, 2017
Young widow and mother Hadley Dixon discovers her three-year-old son, Charlie, missing from their farmhouse next to the Neches River in East Texas. Though Charlie is found safe and sound in short order, the traumatic incident serves as a catalyst for Hadley’s deep dive into family secrets. “It was the sins of her family, and her own, that had come home to roost,” Hadley thinks. “Huge hook-beaked birds that fed on carrion. They’d taken her son, then brought him back. To show they could.”
I would add The Grave Tender by Eliza Maxwell to the growing subgenre I call East Texas Gothic, but I think you need a supernatural element for true East Texas Gothic—preferably a witch. But Maxwell hits the other requirements, especially the primordial, haunted landscape that bears witness. >>READ MORE
Material Media
Paperback, 978-0-9967-5355-5, (also available as an e-book), 194 pgs., $15.95
March 1, 2017
Minister Foy Davis is having a bad week. His wife, and mother of his daughters, has served him with divorce papers, then two days later, in a more or less mutual decision (“like two lovers staring at each other and saying, almost simultaneously, We need to talk”), he’s been removed and/or resigned as pastor of a Baptist church in San Antonio. Foy’s midlife crisis of faith has been building throughout his adult life. He wonders what it would be like to be “a regular person.” As he’s leaving the church for the last time, he reaches for a vial of rose oil used for anointing the sick, gifted to him by an Episcopal-priest friend, and anoints his own forehead.
Foy sets out to discover what he suspects he might’ve been missing. In New Orleans. During Mardi Gras. He may even take up cigars. Emotionally volatile—swinging from anger to sorrow and back again—Foy is weary of being responsible for his congregation (for their souls, no less), and thinks he’d like to be “mildly empathetic, across a vast emotional chasm,” instead. He has “fantasized about … absolute freedom” for years, but in the event, he may find that it really is just another word for nothing left to lose. >>READ MORE
Texas Tech University Press
Hardcover, 978-0-8967-2990-2, 248 pgs., $26.95
March 31, 2017
“. . . striving for success can be as intoxicating as the highest-proof booze and equally susceptible to addiction . . . ”
Bob Horton grew up outside of Lubbock in dusty West Texas, the son of dirt farmers trying to eke a living out of cotton. An ambitious, smart, mischievous child whose competitive spirit was nurtured by his mother, Horton was encouraged to excel. “Achieve little victories and people expect bigger things,” Horton writes of his school days. “They speak about how you have potential and can achieve even more.” >>READ MORE
4.30.2017 Vote for your favorite Texas bookstore starting May 1
Lone Star Lit’s second annual Texas Readers’ Favorite Bookstores voting will be held May 1 through May 18, 2017. Readers, vote as often as you wish for your Favorite Texas Bookstore.
We’ll announce the Top 40 finalists on May 7; then, the Top 20 finalists on May 14. Voting begins May 1, 2017. >>READ MORE
Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events
Bookish Texas event highlights 4.30.2017
>> GO this week Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor
News Briefs 4.30.17
Texas cookbook authors featured at San Angelo “Cooking for a Cause” Apr. 25
Cookbook authors Tiffany Harelik (above, left), author of The Big Country Cookbook and The Terlingua Chili Cookbook, and Angelina LaRue (right), with her The Whole Enchilada cookbook featuring Southwestern cuisine, helped support the annual “Cooking for a Cause” fundraiser in San Angelo April 25. >>READ MORE
Texas Mountain Trail Writers holds 25th annual retreat Apr. 29 at historic Indian Lodge
Kay Ellington and Barbara Brannon of Lone Star Literary Life and coauthors of the Paragraph Ranch series of novels led multiple sessions focusing on writing craft and the business of editing and publishing. >>READ MORE
Ely book wins prize at West Texas Historical Association annual meeting; will speak and sign Butterfield-Overland volume May 4 in Fort Davis
At the April 2017 meeting of the West Texas Historical Association in Lubbock, The Texas Frontier and the Butterfield Overland Mail, 1858–1861 by Dr. Glen Sample Ely of Fort Worth was honored with the Rupert N. Richardson Award for Best Book on West Texas History.
At the Fort Davis National Historic Site, Thurs., May 4, Ely will greet friends and sign books. >>READ MORE
Brookins to discuss her memoir, Rise, at WTAMU’s summer Roundup event June 5; Thomas, Lewis, Claire, Navarro also featured
CANYON — West Texas A&M University will welcome author and motivational speaker Cara Brookins as the keynote speaker for the West Texas Writers’ Academy Writers’ Roundup dinner on Monday, June 5. Brookins’s memoir, Rise: How a House Built a Family, details how she and her children left a traumatic situation and built a house from the ground up with their own hands. >>READ MORE
TOP BOOKISH DESTINATIONS 2017
From the spur of Texas’s boot-heel to the tip of the toe, we’ve traveled the state in search of some delectable destinations for book lovers. Check out all ten on the map as you plan your literary travels! >>READ MORE
Lone Star Listens compilation available Aug. 1, for readers, fans, and writers everywhere
The present generation of Texas authors is the most diverse ever in gender, age, and ethnicity, and in subject matter as well.
Week in, week out, Lone Star Literary has interviewed a range of Texas-related authors with a cross-section of genre and geography. To capture this era in Texas letters, we’re pleased to bring you
Lone Star Listens:
Texas Authors on Writing and Publishing
edited by Kay Ellington and Barbara Brannon; introduction by
Clay Reynolds
Available in trade paper, library hardcover, and ebook Fall 2017
360 pages, with b/w illustrations and index
Featuring novelists, poets, memoirists, editors, and publishers, including:
Rachel Caine • Chris Cander • Katherine Center • Chad S. Conine • Sarah Cortez • Elizabeth Crook • Nan Cuba • Carol Dawson • Patrick Dearen • Jim Donovan • Mac Engel • Sanderia Faye • Carlos Nicolás Flores • Ben Fountain • Jeff Guinn • Stephen Harrigan • Cliff Hudder • Stephen Graham Jones • Kathleen Kent • Joe R. Lansdale • Melissa Lenhardt • Attica Locke • Nikki Loftin • Thomas McNeely • Leila Meacham • John Pipkin • Joyce Gibson Roach • Antonio Ruiz-Camacho • Lisa Sandlin • Donna Snyder • Mary Helen Specht • Jodi Thomas • Amanda Eyre Ward • Ann Weisgarber • Donald Mace Williams
As a collection of insights into the writing and publishing life, the book will be useful in creative writing classes (not just in Texas alone) and other teaching settings, as well as for solo reading and study—and a great Texas reference volume.
- Lone Star Listens will be available for preorder May 1 and will ship around Aug. 1.
- Examination and review copies will be available May 1 in watermarked pdf format.
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COMING UP ON TOUR: NONFICTION
Bending Angels by Jack H. Emmett Visit with Jack May 5–14, 2017
5-May Radio Interview Missus Gonzo
6-May Review Hall Ways Blog
7-May Excerpt StoreyBook Reviews
8-May Review CGB Blog Tours
9-May Author Interview My Book Fix Blog
10-May Character Interview The Page Unbound
11-May Review Reading By Moonlight
12-May Guest Post Books and Broomsticks
13-May Sneak Peek Syd Savvy
14-May Review Forgotten Winds
CONTINUING ON TOUR: NONFICTION
A Witness to History by Janet Neugebauer Visit with Janet through May 5, 2017
4/26 Review Reading By Moonlight
4/27 Promo Texas Book Lover
4/28 Sneak Peek Images StoreyBook Reviews
4/29 Review Syd Savvy
4/30 Promo Missus Gonzo
5/1 Sneak Peek Images CGB Blog Tours
5/2 Review Forgotten Winds
5/3 Promo Books and Broomsticks
5/4 Sneak Peek Images Chapter Break Book Blog
5/5 Review Hall Ways Blog
CONTINUING ON TOUR: FICTION
Deep Extraction by DiAnn Mills Visit with DiAnn through May 4, 2017
4/30 Promo, A Novel Reality
5/1 Review, Books and Broomsticks
5/2 Guest Post: 10 Ways to Show You’re a Strong Woman, The Page Unbound
5/3 Excerpt: Chapter 1, Part 2, Momma On The Rocks
5/4 Review, Syd Savvy
RECENTLY ON TOUR: FICTION
The Grace Tender by Eliza Maxwell Visit with Eliza through April 24, 2017
4/23 Promo A Novel Reality
4/24 Review The Page Unbound
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