{"id":3961,"date":"2021-09-26T09:45:22","date_gmt":"2021-09-26T09:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=3961"},"modified":"2021-09-26T09:45:22","modified_gmt":"2021-09-26T09:45:22","slug":"lone-star-remembers-leila-meacham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=3961","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Remembers: Leila Meacham"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size:16px;\"><span style=\"font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;\">Noted San Antonio novelist Leila Jaynes Meacham, 83, died September 19, 2021, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. She was the author of eight published novels with Texas connections, including several bestsellers, and was working on a ninth novel at the time of her passing. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:16px;\"><span style=\"font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;\">After penning three romance novels in the 1980s, Ms. Meacham declared the book-writing process \u201cnot my calling.\u201d But more than a decade later, she became bored with retirement and resumed work on a manuscript she previously had abandoned. That book, <em>Roses<\/em>, a Southern epic set in East Texas, hit the New York Times hardcover best-seller list in 2010 and stayed there for two months. Four more novels followed: <em>Tumbleweeds <\/em>(2012), the tale of an orphaned California girl sent to live in the Texas Panhandle; <em>Somerset <\/em>(2013), the prequel to <em>Roses<\/em>; <em>Titans <\/em>(2016), set at the start of Texas\u2019s oil boom; and <em>Dragonfly <\/em>(2019), a novel about a World War II secret mission involving five young Americans, including a Texas athlete with German roots.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:16px;\"><span style=\"font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;\">With these works, Leila Meacham became an inspiration to many older adults who wait until retirement, or years afterward, to take up writing. The fate of her unfinished novel, <em>April Storm<\/em>, had not yet been announced at the time of this writing. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:16px;\"><span style=\"font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;\">She was born September 7, 1938, in Minden, Louisiana, but grew up in Texas. Ms. Meacham was a 1963 graduate of North Texas State University in Denton, where she majored in education. She taught high school English classes in Texas before retiring.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:16px;\"><span style=\"font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;\">A visitation will be held Friday, October 1, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Sunset Funeral Home, 1701 Austin Highway, San Antonio, TX 78218. Funeral services will be at the same location, Saturday, October 2, at 12:30 p.m. Internment will follow at 2 p.m. at Sunset Memorial Park.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A remembrance of Texas author Leila Meacham<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9,175,8,22,539],"class_list":["post-3961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lonestarliterarylife","tag-lonestarremembers","tag-lonestarliterarycom","tag-newsbrief","tag-remembers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961","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=3961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}