A Walk Across Texas,

by Jon McConal, Foreword by Tom Dodge

Part travelogue, part natural history, and part documentary, A Walk Across Texas is the record of three friends' journey from the Panhandle to Granbury a 450-mile walk across West Texas. Jon McConal and his two friends, Eddie Lane and Norm Snyder, hiked for twenty-eight days through the less-traveled byways of the Texas outlands, and in the process encountered a world that is now as foreign to most Americans as the Taj Mahal. Researching places they wanted to see in advance, the trio selected a route that crossed as many creeks and rivers as possible and offered amenable campsites. No longer young men, McConal, Lane, and Snyder conquered the harsh environment of West Texas, dealing with blisters, backaches, severe weather and low blood sugar while still remaining friends. Along the way they met unique local characters and visited out-of-the-ordinary sites. With his seasoned journalist's eye, McConal blends personal interviews and keen descriptions of the countryside they trekked. As he spins the narrative of their journey, local legends, histories, flora, and fauna unfold.

 

Traces of Forgotten Places, by Don Collins

For over half a century Austin artist Don Collins has crisscrossed Texas looking for traces of the past in a variety of old buildings. Drawings of these places have appeared for three decades in popular calendars issued by the Miller Blueprint Company, which have become collectors' items. In order to prepare his annual calendars, Don frequented less-traveled byways and forgotten places. When he began retracing his routes, he bought a stack of Texas county road maps and marked the courses that he had taken so that he would be sure to see new country on each subsequent foray. In time he expanded his range to more distant areas of the state. In this book Don has chosen seventy works of art that he created for the Miller Blueprint calendars. The carefully detailed renderings record buildings from farmhouses to industrial plants, from shanties to mansions. Through these pages viewers tour the state both visually and through the artist's own recollections about the remarkable range of places he captured with pencil and paper.

 

Notes from Texas: On Writing in the Lone Star State, edited by W.C. Jameson

The vast geographic landscape of Texas has uniquely inspired its renowned writers with its cultural depth and diversity; both native and transplant Texan writers alike have been keenly shaped by the richness of Texas folklore, history, and traditions. Jameson has compiled a collection of essays by prominent Texas writers through which he explores the following questions: “How did they accomplish their goals? Why did they choose the writing life? What influence did the history, lore, and culture of Texas play in their creative process?” While readily citing the “decidedly Texas flavor” in his own fiction, Jameson seeks to uncover the inspirations in other writers from both the expansive and rugged Texas terrain and the varied people therein. The fourteen writers who comprise Notes from Texas range from the captivating and often humorous essayist Larry L. King to the beloved historical novelist Elmer Kelton. Other contributors include James Ward Lee, known for his expertise in Texas cuisine and culture, and poet and songwriter Red Steagall. This collection gives each a “chance to express what they wished to share about their art and their life as a Texas writer.”

descant Fifty Years: The Literary Journal of TCU, edited by David Kuhne

This celebration of fifty years of descant, the literary journal of Texas Christian University, features many talented writers. It traces descant's history from its beginnings as the product of a literary discussion group to its recent years as a critically acclaimed small magazine that receives thousands of submissions and offers annual awards. The anthology begins with a memoir by Betsy Colquitt, who founded descant in 1956. The early years of descant had a distinctly local flavor and featured such young talents as Bill Camfield, William Barney, and Jim Corder. But Colquitt's uncanny ability for recognizing and publishing promising writers from across the nation soon made descant an established literary voice. Since Colquitt's retirement, the editors of descant have continued the tradition of publishing both emerging authors and established writers such as William Harrison, Clyde Edgerton, and Andrew Hudgins. The retrospective is organized chronologically and divided into three sections that are introduced by editors Dave Kuhne, Daniel E. Williams, and Charlotte Hogg. Charlotte Willis also contributed her editorial skills to the project.

Purple Hearts, by C.W. Smith

C.W. Smith's Purple Hearts is the story of the epileptic scion of an East Texas timber and oil fortune and his marriage to a stunning stranger desperate for sanctuary. Though naïve and virginal, thirty-year-old Georgie Karacek wins Sylvia through his charm and kindness. Longing to prove himself, he hides his illness to join the Army. To make ends meet, Sylvia takes on a boarder, Robert, in Georgie's absence. Soon they grow close, and he presses her to run away with him. When Georgie's epilepsy comes to light, he is discharged, but on returning home he suspects that Sylvia and Robert are lovers. But wartime conditions explode into rioting, and that uproar puts them at odds with the town when Georgie helps a black friend flee. Purple Hearts is based loosely on events in Beaumont, Texas, in July of 1943, when shipyard workers rampaged following a rumor that a black man had raped a sailor's wife. Several people died and scores were injured. Writer/critic Bryan Woolley has hailed Purple Hearts as “the best novel I've read about the home front during World War II.”

Border, by Leon Metz

This is the chronicle of the Mexican border, the nearly two thousand mile international line between the United States and Mexico. It is a historical account described largely through the eyes and experiences of government agents, politicians, soldiers, revolutionaries, outlaws, Indians, engineers, immigrants, developers, illegal aliens, businesspeople, and wayfarers looking for a job. It is essentially the untold story of lines drawn in water, sand, and blood, of an intrepid, durable people, of a civilization whose ebb and flow of history is as significant as any in the world. Fourteen years in the making, Border chronicles the two-thousand mile line between the U.S. and Mexico-from Brownsville, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico to near San Diego on the Pacific Ocean. Award-winning historian Leon Metz takes the reader from America's early westward expansion to today's awesome border problems of water rights, pollution, immigration, illegal aliens, and the massive effort of two nations attempting to pull together for a common cause.

 

Texas Poets Laureate Series: Steven Fromholz

by Steven Fromholz, edited by Billy Bob Hill, introduction by James Ward Lee

The songs and poems of 2007 Texas Poet Laureate Steven Fromholz tell of a life that began with “bikes and trikes and kites and trees” and has progressed through fatherhood and many days and nights spent on the road. He is a poet as well worth reading as he is a singer worth hearing. Fromholz's poetry and lyrics evoke the western landscape, capture memories of the past and plans for the future, and plumb the depths and heights of feeling engendered by life as a touring musician. Despite a stroke, which felled him for a time, Fromholz still acts as a whitewater guide on the Rio Grande, still performs, and still writes the poems that caused the State Legislature to name him Poet Laureate of Texas for 2007.

Texas Poets Laureate Series: Larry D. Thomas, by Larry D. Thomas, edited by Billy Bob Hill

A mature poet, Larry Thomas has an extraordinary gift which has evolved through decades at his craft. Thomas explores the natural world of Texas-its animal icons like the Hereford or hawk or rattlesnake, the larger-than-life geography, which is the stuff out of which legends are made-but is no xenophobic local colorist or chamber of commerce propagandist. No, Thomas captures the spirit of place within larger truths that “travel well,” as editor Billy Bob Hill explains in his introduction. Likening Thomas' personal geography to that of Kate Chopin, Hill also takes careful note of the poet's deft alliteration and just-right compression of language as he urges readers to enjoy Thomas' poems for their Texas elements, but also the worldly art therein. Click here to listen to an interview with Thomas.