{"id":1172,"date":"2018-12-31T16:02:29","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T16:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1172"},"modified":"2018-12-31T16:02:29","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T16:02:29","slug":"lone-star-reviewsmichelle-newby-nbcc-93","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1172","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/span><\/span>Lone Star Reviews<\/span>Michelle Newby, NBCC,<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n

Contributing Editor<\/span><\/h1>\n
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<\/span><\/span>FICTION \/ TEXANA<\/p>\n

Heath Dollar<\/span><\/p>\n

Waylon County: Texas Stories<\/span><\/p>\n

Sleeping Panther Press<\/p>\n

Paperback, 978-0-9980661-4-1 (also available as ebook); $14.99<\/p>\n

Waylon County: Texas Stories is a fresh-voiced, well-composed collection<\/span> of thirty-one vignettes and short stories set in a fictional county in the Texas Hill Country.<\/p>\n

Some of its characters include: a woman who fears Texas won\u2019t let her get married a tenth time; a lowly state bureaucrat whose job is to write official letters of congratulation; a man trying to rekindle an old romance while claiming his pet monkey is a \u201ccomfort\u201d animal; a linguist who wants to help keep alive the last remnants of the German dialect originally spoken by early Texas settlers; a young man sneaking beers and cigars into his dying father\u2019s hospital room and pushing him outside in a wheelchair so they can share some final time alone; and a ranch hand hired by an aging, wealthy landowner to also serve as his personal philosopher.\u00a0 >>READ MORE<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/span><\/span><\/span>Texas Reads<\/span>Glenn Dromgoole<\/span><\/h1>\n

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\u00a0Hall of Fame Ranger lawmen profiled in new series<\/h1>\n

The University of North Texas Press<\/span> has published The Ranger Ideal, Volume 1: Texas Rangers in the Hall of Fame, 1823\u20131861<\/span><\/a><\/span> by Darren L. Ivey<\/span> ($39.95 hardcover, 650 pages).<\/p>\n

This first book in a planned three-part series offers 40- to 70-page profiles of such early-day Ranger luminaries as Bigfoot Wallace, John C. Hays, and Lawrence Sullivan Ross, with about 250 pages of endnotes, bibliography and index. The Texas Ranger Museum and Hall of Fame is in Waco.<\/p>\n

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Pecos stories: <\/span>Spur Award-winning Midland author Patrick Dearen<\/span> writes about the history, legends and folklore of the Pecos River region of West Texas in Castle Gap and the Pecos Frontier, Revisited<\/span><\/a><\/span> (TCU Press, $22.50 paperback). Stories in the collection include the ghost of Fort Stockton, the Lost Wagon Train, and Will Sublett\u2019s lost gold mine.<\/p>\n

Vietnam summit:<\/span> The Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas has published A War Remembered: The Vietnam War Summit at the LBJ Presidential Library<\/span><\/a><\/span> by Mark K. Updegrove<\/span> (UT Press, $39.95 hardcover).<\/p>\n

The oversized volume includes speeches and panels from the April 2016 summit as well as historic photos from the Vietnam War era. Ken Burns<\/span> and Lynn Novick<\/span> talked about their then-upcoming ten-part documentary series on the Vietnam War, aired on PBS this fall.<\/p>\n

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Ranger novel: <\/span>Novelist Jon Land\u2019s<\/span> ninth thriller featuring fearless fifth-generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong is Strong to the Bone<\/span><\/a><\/span> (Forge, $26.99 hardcover).<\/p>\n

His series of action-packed novels made its debut in 2009 with Strong Enough to Die<\/span> and he has followed up with one every year since. Even if you haven\u2019t read any of the previous novels in the series, you can still plunge right in with Catlin\u2019s latest adventure.<\/p>\n

Seguin namesake:<\/span> Bill Neely<\/span> has written A Tejano Knight: The Quest of Don Juan Seguin<\/span><\/a><\/span> (neeleybooks.com, $29.99 hardcover), a comprehensive account of a military and political leader of the Texas Revolution who fought Santa Anna at San Jacinto, served as mayor of San Antonio, fled to Mexico where he claimed he was forced to fight for Mexico in its attempt to retake Texas, then returned to Texas to clear his name. The Texas town of Seguin is named for him.<\/p>\n

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Glenn Dromgoole\u2019s<\/span> latest book is West Texas Stories<\/span><\/a><\/span>Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.<\/p>\n

>> <\/span>Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Lit<\/a><\/span>erary Life<\/span><\/h1>\n

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Cinco Puntos Press<\/p>\n

Hardcover, 978-1-9410-2676-2, (also available as an e-book), 288 pgs., $16.95<\/p>\n

October 17, 2017<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you see, my grandchild? We have new life with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the most basic level, <\/span>you could say All Around Us<\/span> is a children\u2019s book about shapes. \u201cGrandpa says circles are all around us. We just have to look for them.\u201d A young girl and her grandfather take a walk and identify circles: the sun, a clock, bicycle wheels. On a whole other level, All Around Us<\/span> is still about circles, but these are the circles of life. \u201cHere is another circle,\u201d [Grandpa] says as they tend their vegetable garden. \u201cWhat we take from the earth, we return.\u201d These circles are thunderstorms and rainbows, planting and harvesting, birth and death. As above, so below.\u00a0 >>READ MORE<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Simon Pulse<\/p>\n

Hardcover, 978-1-4814-6351-9, (also available as an e-book), 304 pgs., $17.99<\/p>\n

March 14, 2017<\/p>\n

Sixteen-year-old Leah Roberts lives in a broken family at the edge of the East Texas piney woods.<\/span> Ten years ago, her family has been shattered in the aftermath of the death, in those woods, of her brother Sam. Leah\u2019s father is Pastor Roberts, and he has a lot of rules (no lip gloss, no bikinis); one of those rules is never, ever go into the woods. But the forest is the only place Leah can let down her emotional walls, be herself. \u201cThis forest is my religion, the towering cathedral of trees my church, and I\u2019m reborn every time I leave,\u201d Leah tells us.<\/p>\n

The forest is Leah\u2019s comfort, both freedom and sanctuary, and holds her biggest secret. \u201cHeavy steps echo through the trees, the surefooted sound of creatures that have nothing to fear in this world,\u201d Leah says. Would that that were true. \u201cI\u2019ve watched something that technically doesn\u2019t exist come and go in the forest behind our home for years.\u201d Leah has never told anyone because she\u2019s pretty sure they\u2019d stop listening at \u201cBigfoot.\u201d But the morning she first sees the human boy with the Sasquatch, she knows she has a difficult decision to make. \u201cThe walls are falling down around me, pushing me closer to the human embodiment of everything I love about the forest. Leah is gone,\u201d she thinks, \u201cand in her place is a girl walking with a boy who feels like home, the way it was before everything fell apart.\u201d\u00a0 >>READ MORE<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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LONE STAR LISTENS interviews\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>>> archive<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n

Author interviews by Kay Ellington<\/span><\/h1>\n

12.24.2017\u00a0 New York expat and Homesick Texan cookbook author L<\/a><\/span>isa Fain shares her Lone Star longings (and her divinity recipe)<\/h1>\n

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Those of us from the Lone Star State know what it\u2019s like<\/span> to be homesick for Texas. But one Texpatriate has taken her craving for the comfort of home and comfort food to a whole new level. <\/span>Lisa Fain,<\/span> aka The Homesick Texan, has launched an award-winning blog and series of cookbooks based on the tastes of Texas. She talks with us in our Christmas Eve Lone Star Listens about her holiday food traditions and even shares a recipe.<\/span><\/p>\n

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: <\/span>I understand that you are a seventh-generation Texan, Lisa. What do you know about the early generations of your family?<\/span><\/p>\n

LISA FAIN: <\/span>My family settled in North Texas in the 1840s, and they were primarily farmers until my grandparents\u2019 generation. My great-great-great-great-grandfather John Coffman arrived from Tennessee with a headright for 1,000 acres in the Peters Colony, which is part of Collin County today. He was the first person in the area to have a wood-burning stove, and people would come over just to see it in action. Another great-great-great -great-grandfather, Elisha Chambers, was known as Tater Chambers because loved to grow sweet potatoes. Food has clearly played an important role in my family\u2019s history! What\u2019s cool is that my grandma today lives on land that\u2019s been in the family since my ancestors first arrived, and we\u2019ve been continuously growing things on that land since that time.<\/p>\n

You grew up outside of Houston. Was it in a small town, suburb or “in the country”? What was that like, and how did that influence your life as a writer?<\/p>\n

While I was born in Dallas and my family is from that area, when I was nine my dad got a job in Houston so we moved there. I grew up in the northwest suburbs, but they were on the outer reaches of the city and that area back then straddled the line between rural and suburban. I went to Cy-Fair High School, which in the late 1980s was the last stop before the town of Hempstead on Highway 290. There was nothing but farm land surrounding the school at that time, so seeing how much that area has developed since then still surprises me.\u00a0 >>READ MORE<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events
<\/span>Bookish Texas<\/span> event highlights\u00a0 12.24.2017 <\/span>>><\/span><\/a><\/span> GO this week\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor<\/span><\/h1>\n

SPECIAL EVENTS THIS WEEK<\/span><\/p>\n