Love Finds You in Humble, Texas Video trailer for the book by Anita Higman |
 Steven Heighton (Apr 10) in The New York Times reviews THE COLOR OF LIGHTNING By Paulette Jiles (William Morrow / HarperCollins). It begins "The hero of Paulette Jiles's third novel is a historical figure, a freed slave whose journey into the Texas Panhandle to rescue his wife and children — abducted not by slave traders but by Indians — derives from oral histories supported by a few traces of documentation. The novel begins in 1863 and ends in 1871, a few years before the local Indians were subdued and confined to reservations, and the great southern buffalo herd was annihilated, forever changing the land at." Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/books/review/Heighton-t.html?_r=1Mike Shea (April) in the Texas Monthly reviews the same. It begins "Stick a thumb into any page of Paulette Jiles's The Color of Lightning and you'll pull out a fine prose plum. The San Antonio author has trademarked an offhand lyricism, and she displays it amply in this intelligent Civil War–era novel: "Britt and Mary slept with the two children between them. They lay in their blankets like parentheses around the two lives in their care." The book is based on the life of Britt Johnson, an emancipated black man living in north-central Texas circa 1870." Read more in your copy of the TM. Steve Bennett of the San Antonio Express News has his review of it in the Houston Chronicle (April 2). http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/books/reviews/6355998.html
|
 The University of North Texas Library may be the most developmentally successful college library in the state. It's Portal to Texas History program is hands-down admirable. You may wish to keep yourself infomed by a free subscription to their . . . Beyond the Bytes e-newsletter. Just ask at PORTALTOTEXASHISTORY [at] UNT.EDU |
 Richard Roach, author of the mystery Scattered Leaves about murder, drugs, and oil, is interviewed at Home Sweet HomeReader Views http://www.readerviews.com/InterviewRoach.html which begins "Richard E. Roach was born in Galveston, Texas in 1931. He attended Trinity University, and the University of Texas. He served in the USAF for four years as a drill sergeant. Richard has invented several electronic instruments used in the detection of oil and gas, formed his company, manufactured them and sold them nationwide as Richard E. Roach, Inc. Before the oil business fell upon hard times, he sold the business for several million dollars and retired to write. Richard is married and Norma has put up with him since 1948. He has three grown children." or listen to the same at the Inside Scoop Live |
Robert Flynn talks with "Heal Yourself Talk Radio." HYTR begins their description of Flynn as "Robert Flynn, professor emeritus, Trinity University and a native of Chillicothe, Texas, is the author of twelve books. Seven novels: North To Yesterday; In the House of the Lord; The Sounds of Rescue, The Signs of Hope; Wanderer Springs, The Last Klick, The Devils Tiger, co-authored with the late Dan Klepper, and Tie-Fast Country. His dramatic adaptation of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying was the United States entry at the Theater of Nations in Paris in l964 and won a Special Jury Award. He is also the author of a two-part documentary, "A Cowboy Legacy," shown on ABC-TV, a nonfiction narrative, A Personal War in Vietnam, an oral history When I Was Just Your Age, two story collections, Seasonal Rain and Living With The Hyenas, and a collection of essays, Growing Up a Sullen Baptist. He is co-editor of Paul Baker and the Integration of Abilities." Read and listen to more at |
| H-net carries a review Donald E. Reynolds. Texas Terror: The Slave Insurrection Panic of 1860 and the Secession of the Lower South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. Plates. xii + 237 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8071-3283-8. Reviewed by Carl Moneyhon - The review begins "In the summer of 1860, fear of an abolitionist plot to cause a slave insurrection spread across the South following a fire on July 8 that destroyed much of the business district of Dallas, Texas. Scholars, beginning with Ollinger Crenshaw in the 1940s, have seen the so-called Texas Troubles as an important step toward secession, particularly helping to create the psychological context for action.[1] The history and character of that panic, however, has never been explored fully prior to this work." Read more at http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=23533 |
