{"id":779,"date":"2018-12-31T13:57:08","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T13:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=779"},"modified":"2018-12-31T13:57:08","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T13:57:08","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-79","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=779","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book ReviewsBy Michelle Newby, NBCCContributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Kirkus, <\/span>freelance writer, member of the National Book Critics Circle, blogger at www.TexasBookLover.com, and a moderator at the 20th annual Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, World Literature Today, High Country News, South85 Journal, The Review Review, Concho River Review, Monkeybicycle, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, <\/span>and The Collagist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

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<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/span>FICTION<\/p>\n

Willie Nelson<\/span> (with David Ritz<\/span>)<\/p>\n

Pretty Paper: A Christmas Tale<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Blue Rider Press, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA)<\/p>\n

Hardcover, 978-0-7352-1154-4 (also available as an e-book, an audio book, and on Audible), 304 pgs., $23.00<\/p>\n

October 25, 2016<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a rough Christmas in a rough town,\u201d <\/span>December in the early 1960s, and Willie is headed into Leonards department store in downtown Fort Worth to do some holiday gift shopping when he spies a man down on his luck, both legs amputated above the knee, balancing on a rolling board, hawking wrapping paper, ribbons, and bows on the sidewalk. Willie buys his Christmas gifts and goes back outside to look for the man with the pretty paper, but he\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n

Willie, intrigued by the quality of the man\u2019s voice when he was singing out about his ribbon for sale \u2014 and suspecting he might be a musician \u2014 returns to look for him several times. The man on the board is Vernon Clay. He does have a story, one he doesn\u2019t want to tell, but Willie is compelled to discover what brought a man with that voice so low. When Willie sets out to make things right, the situation quickly becomes complicated.<\/p>\n

Pretty Paper: A Christmas Tale<\/span><\/a><\/span> is \u201cautobiographical fiction\u201d from Willie Nelson<\/span> (with the help of longtime collaborator David Ritz<\/span>), based on his hit song of the same title.\u00a0 Pretty Paper seems simple, but as with Willie\u2019s songs, you soon find yourself in the deep end of the pool, tackling big questions like the nature of God, betrayal in business and love, and why bad things happen to good people. Inexplicably drawn to the enigma of Vernon Clay, Willie makes a human connection with a stranger, and does the right thing because it\u2019s the right thing to do.<\/p>\n

Pretty Paper<\/span> is peopled with colorful characters. There\u2019s \u201cNutsy\u201d Perkins, a local enforcer and bookie with an affinity for white fedoras with purple feathers in the brim, a drummer called Brother Paul (\u201cwho understood [Willie\u2019s] personal sense of rhythm. Not everyone does.\u201d) given to wide-brimmed hats and black capes, and Ranger Roy Finkelstein, who owns a record store in Garland (\u201cGarland is where the action is. There\u2019s more to Garland than meets the eye.\u201d) where Willie tracks down clues to Vernon Clay.<\/p>\n

Willie\u2019s good-natured, dry wit is here. A British music promotor wearing a monocle and tweeds wants to take Willie to England. Brit: \u201cLet\u2019s proceed to the dining room for tea and crumpets.\u201d Willie: \u201cOr bourbon and barbecue. This is Memphis.\u201d When Willie tries to talk a nightclub owner into letting Vernon Clay sing with his band, the owner responds with, \u201cSeeing some guy in a wheelchair don\u2019t make nobody wanna dance.\u201d<\/p>\n

A feel-good, quickly paced holiday tale, Pretty Paper is sometimes too sweet, with a couple clich\u00e9s too many, but these flaws are infrequent. More often, we are treated to Zen Willie: \u201ccosmic conspiracy\u201d at work and advice to \u201clove the mystery,\u201d extolling writing and music as therapy, release, and exorcism, reminding me in turn of O. Henry and Jimmy Buffett.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a slim, handsomely designed volume; the dust jacket features an iconic drawing of Willie in saturated color, complete with a red bandana anchoring his braids, and a green scarf warming his neck. The interior is similarly thoughtful, with simple charcoal drawings scattered throughout and the edges of the pages changing color by section, striped like a candy cane. This first-person narrative of seasonal serendipity reads as if you\u2019re hanging on the tour bus with the man himself, telling tales. The final touching twist left me smiling, as any good Christmas tale should.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Newby is contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Kirkus, freelance writer, member of the National Book Critics Circle, blogger at www.TexasBookLover.com, and a moderator at the 20th annual Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, World Literature Today, High Country News, South85 Journal, The Review Review, Concho […]<\/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-779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779","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=779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}