{"id":1289,"date":"2018-12-31T16:35:27","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T16:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1289"},"modified":"2018-12-31T16:35:27","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T16:35:27","slug":"glenn-dromgooles-texas-reads-column-appears-weekly-at-lonestarliterary-com-89","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1289","title":{"rendered":"Glenn Dromgoole’s Texas Reads column appears weekly at LoneStarLiterary.com"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/span><\/span>Texas Reads<\/span>>> archive<\/span><\/a><\/span>Glenn Dromgoole<\/span><\/h1>\n

4.22.2018\u00a0\u00a0 Lisa Wingate novel a best seller for six months<\/h1>\n

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<\/a><\/span><\/span>Texas author Lisa Wingate\u2019s novel<\/span> Before We Were Yours<\/span><\/a><\/span> (Ballantine, $26, hardcover) has been on the New York Times<\/span> Bestseller List every week for more than six months, much longer than the latest novels from such authors as John Grisham<\/span> and James Patterson.<\/span> Eventually it will come out in paperback but not anytime soon. Meanwhile, it\u2019s been making the top ten week after week after week.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve known Lisa since her early success with her debut novel, Tending Roses<\/span> (2001),\u00a0 based on stories from her own grandmother. It\u2019s still in print, and it remains one of Lisa\u2019s favorites that she likes to read at book events.<\/p>\n

The first of Lisa\u2019s novels I read was Good Hope Road<\/span> (2003), and I highly recommend it. It involved a tornado that tore through a Missouri community. A young woman rescued a victim, then made it her mission to sort through debris and reunite photographs and letters with the proper families.<\/p>\n

Lisa and husband Sam lived in Clifton, Texas, near Waco for several years before heading to Arkansas and then back to Texas.<\/p>\n

Before We Were Yours<\/span> \u2014 which I think is Lisa\u2019s best novel, and certainly her most successful \u2014 is based on a true story about a Memphis children\u2019s home in the 1930s that kidnapped poor children and sold them to wealthy families for a huge profit.<\/p>\n

The story is fiction, but the children\u2019s home was not. Georgia Tann ran the Tennessee Children\u2019s Home Society in Memphis from the 1920s until the scandal was fully investigated in the early 1950s. You can get more information about the home by Googling Tann\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

Lisa\u2019s novels are good PG reads, with strong characters but little or no bad language. I think one of the reasons that Before You Were Yours<\/span> has stayed on the best-seller list for so long is because it\u2019s a tough, compelling story but one you feel comfortable passing along to your\u00a0 mom, grandmother, or friend.<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/span><\/span>Texas stories: <\/span>Carlton Stowers\u2019s<\/span> collection of Texas stories, On Texas Backroads<\/span><\/a><\/span> is being featured this week as the 2018 selection for Mansfield Reads.<\/p>\n

The Mansfield Public Library every year encourages all its patrons to read one particular book and brings in the author to talk about it. Stowers will speak at the library at 7 p.m. Friday.<\/p>\n

On Texas Backroads<\/span> ($16.95 paperback) includes more than forty stories, essays, and musings by Stowers, most of them previously published in the last few years in American Way<\/span>, the American Airlines magazine, or other magazines or newspapers.<\/p>\n

Included are such gems as a piece pursuing the far-fetched possibility that Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth actually escaped and made his way to Texas, a touching story about a special Christmas the author fondly recalls, a tribute to Ballinger\u2019s still-operating Carnegie Library, a debate about the origin of the hamburger with a humorous note about how fried potatoes came to be called French fries, and a tribute to the chicken fried steak at Mary\u2019s Caf\u00e9 in Strawn.<\/p>\n

For more information on Mansfield Reads, go to mansfieldlibraryfriends.org<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

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Glenn Dromgoole<\/span> writes about Texas books and authors. Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

>> Read his past Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life here.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texas Reads>> archiveGlenn Dromgoole 4.22.2018\u00a0\u00a0 Lisa Wingate novel a best seller for six months Texas author Lisa Wingate\u2019s novel Before We Were Yours (Ballantine, $26, hardcover) has been on the New York Times Bestseller List every week for more than six months, much longer than the latest novels from such authors as John Grisham and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}