{"id":943,"date":"2018-12-31T14:50:50","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T14:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=943"},"modified":"2018-12-31T14:50:50","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T14:50:50","slug":"glenn-dromgooles-texas-reads-column-appears-weekly-at-lonestarliterary-com-59","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=943","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

5.21.2017\u00a0\u00a0 Baron creates quite a stir in Fort Griffin novel<\/h1>\n

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<\/a><\/span><\/span>When Baron Jerome Manchester Paget, claiming to be a fifth cousin to the Queen of England,<\/span> steps off the stagecoach in Fort Griffin carrying a satchel full of money, life in the frontier town will never be the same.<\/p>\n

Nearly everyone in town \u2014 and some who haven\u2019t even arrived yet \u2014 start trying to figure how to get their hands on the $25,000 the baron proudly announces he has brought with him to start a buffalo ranch. A buffalo ranch? In a town where buffalo hides drive the local economy? The town residents hoot with laughter.<\/p>\n

San Angelo author Preston Lewis<\/span> spins quite a yarn with his comic western novel, The Fleecing of Fort Griffin<\/span><\/a><\/span> (Wild Horse Press, $19.95 paperback). The novel recently won the Elmer Kelton Award from the West Texas Historical Association for best creative work on West Texas.<\/p>\n

Creative, indeed. Colorful characters abound \u2014 a traveling evangelist huckster, his \u201ccrippled\u201d accomplice,\u00a0 a woman who has already buried five husbands, an unscrupulous buffalo-hide buyer, a couple who run a seduction racket, a one-eyed gunslinger, a disenchanted colonel, a professional gambler \u2014 all trying to figure out how to bilk the baron of his fortune. But the baron proves remarkably able to take care of himself, thanks to his guard rooster and an orphan he befriended on arriving in Fort Griffin. If you\u2019re looking for a delightful tale, check out The Fleecing of Fort Griffin.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lewis is the author of about thirty books, mostly western novels, and has won the Elmer Kelton Award twice before and two Spur Awards. He has written under several pseudonyms, including Will Camp<\/span> and Stephen Calder.<\/span> Lewis\u2019s series of innovative western novels \u2014 the Memoirs of H. H. Lomax \u2014 are being reissued by Wild Horse Press. I have read the first book in that series, The Demise of Billy the Kid<\/span>, and can\u2019t wait to get into the second one, The Redemption of Jesse James.<\/span> Writing as Lomax, Lewis tosses around colorful similes and metaphors like a three-handed juggler at a Shrine circus.<\/p>\n

Now in paperback:<\/span> All of Leila Meacham\u2019s<\/span> Texas epic novels are now available in paperback. The latest, Titans,<\/span><\/a><\/span> is $15.99 in trade paperback. If you haven\u2019t read Roses<\/span> or Somerset<\/span> or Titans,<\/span> treat yourself to a Meacham novel. They are all in the 500- to 600-page range, but the pages just fly by.<\/p>\n

Titans<\/span> is set in North Texas in 1900, six years after oil was discovered in Corsicana and a year before the first big boom would blow in at Spindletop, near Beaumont. As oil begins to be a factor in the Texas economy, ranchers face a new set of opportunities and challenges in how to deal with change and its consequences. Twins, adopted by different families shortly after birth, are now twenty years old and figure prominently into the drama.<\/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

>> Read his past Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life here.<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texas Reads>> archiveGlenn Dromgoole 5.21.2017\u00a0\u00a0 Baron creates quite a stir in Fort Griffin novel When Baron Jerome Manchester Paget, claiming to be a fifth cousin to the Queen of England, steps off the stagecoach in Fort Griffin carrying a satchel full of money, life in the frontier town will never be the same. Nearly everyone […]<\/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-943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943","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=943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}