Adelsverein: The Gathering. By Celia Hayes

 Adelsverein: The Gathering.  By Celia Hayes, Strider Nolan Media, Inc., 2008, 365 pages, http://www.celiahayes.com/  available at Amazon

 

Review by Dick Stanley, author of  Leaving The Alamo: Texas Stories After Vietnam, The Texas Scribbler at http://texasscribbler.com/  

 

"This is a dandy historical novel of the German settlement of the Hill Country which I recommend with caveats. I was familiar with the basic facts but learned a few things, such as the details of Baron Meuesbach's peace treaty with the Comanches. It was unique in Texas and more or less held until the last adult male of the murderous tribe was exterminated by the U.S. Army. I also didn't know how inept the pre-Meusebach Verein leaders were or that they employed their own uniformed soldiers to protect the settler families.

As a two-time indie author, I finally realized that I had yet to read someone else's indie book. I figured author Celia Hayes (the blogosphere and Milblogging's "Sgt. Mom") and her Adelsverein Texana trilogy was the best place to start. It was a good decision. This first book of the trilogy paints an epic in satisfying old-fashioned style that effectively lures a lover of such reads on and on.

Now the caveats: Hayes leaves almost nothing to the reader's imagination. That can grate on folks raised on movies and television. Unlike readers of the 19th century, we don't need exhaustive description of major and minor actors. I also could have done without all the adverbs. Seemingly every speech is characterized, rather than trusting to the context to convey the meaning. Nevertheless, the main characters are real and lovable and their tragedies and joys won my empathy and spurred my curiosity to find out what would happen to them next.

I was appalled at the typos and misspellings, by my count on 46 of the book's 365 pages. Surely, most of them could have been avoided, and a second edition to fix them is warranted. Still, Hayes is sufficiently talented and her story so well crafted that I will buy the second installment, "The Sowing." It concerns the Civil War years, during which the real German settlers had the ill-luck to be Unionists in a predominantly Confederate state. I want to find out how the Beckers and the Steinmetzs fare. Tragedy ahead, I expect. I'll be hoping, though, to find that the proofreading has improved."

Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire - Perkinson

Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire  by Robert Perkinson is reviewed by Mary Foster in the Rochester, MN Post Bulletin.  It begins:

"As Robert Perkinson points out in "Texas Tough," his very readable history of U.S. prisons, locking up people is big business. America sends more people to prison per capita than any other country in the world, locking up about one out of every 100 people.
     Perkinson, a professor of American studies at the University of Hawaii, presents a compelling history of the prison system and its growth in the United States. He also shows that when it comes to prisons, no state does it better — or worse, depending on your outlook — than Texas.
     Surprisingly, prisons in which criminals are confined for long periods and are sometimes offered the opportunity to reform, are a relatively new invention. Although locking up people for crimes may be as old as civilization, Perkinson writes that prisons as we know them — "an institution that houses convicted lawbreakers for protracted, precisely measured periods of time — is a product only of the modern age," having begun toward the end of the 18th century."  Read more about Texas "leadership" at

http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=31&a=443123

See also http://texastough.com/authorship/

Exploring the Edges of Texas - Davis

Si Dunn in the Dallas News reviews Exploring the Edges of Texas By Walt and Isabel Davis.

The review begins: "

In 1955, Dallas Morning News columnist Frank X. Tolbert set off on an expedition that would span a greater distance than the length of the Amazon River. Many readers were enthralled by the tales that emerged each week as the writer and his 9-year-old son, Frank Tolbert Jr., circumnavigated the Texas border in a dusty Willis Jeep.

Tolbert's tales struck an especially deep chord with Walt Davis, who was then 13 and living in Oak Cliff. Young Walt vowed he would someday make his own trek through the counties that outline his home state.

A half-century later, Walt Davis and his wife, Isabel, finally had the time and resources to undertake "a four thousand mile-long, three-century-deep exploration of the edge of Texas." Family responsibilities and other realities, however, kept them from duplicating the late columnist's arduous excursion. Instead, they broke their journey into sections. They made multiple trips to different border areas, with Isabel keeping travel journals and research notes, Walt serving as "the expedition artist," and both writing about their adventures and observations."  Read more at

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/stories/DN-bk_edgesoftexas_0314gd.ART.State.Bulldog.49da97a.html

See also http://www.exploringtheedgesoftexas.com/

Bob Wills Visits Rolling Stone

   

Well, not exactly.  But the once radical Rolling Stone rock music magazine has certainly grownup while I stepped away, and apparently have tracked Bob for a while..  There's a recent review of Tiffany Transcriptions from Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.  The Transcriptions are actually a 10 disk set.  Stoners see their roots in Junior Barnard's guitar.  Yep, blame it on Junior (it's always the young ones).

 

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/25463418/review/25523960/tiffanytranscriptions

And to top it all off, the RS website has page on Bob and the Boys, with a directory of performers and a very long discography of RS notices and links and, reviews etc. back to the 1950's

http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/bobwillshistexasplayboys

There's an option to audio

Key Tracks / Most Popular Songs on Rhapsody.com / Play All

• Take Me Back To Tulsa

• San Antonio Rose

• What Makes Bob Holler

• San Antonio Rose

• Deep In The Heart Of Texas

plus a link to Bob's website at http://www.texasplayboys.net/

 

 

Just Visitin' Old Texas Jails - Hall

   Just Visitin' Old Texas Jails.  By Joan Upton Hall.  Abilene:  State House Press, dist. by TAMU Consortium, 2007.  200 pages, 102 b&w photos, 1 map,  glossary, 6x9 paperback,   ISBN  978-1-933337-14-2   $16.95 

http://www.tamu.edu/upress/    http://www.joanuptonhall.com

 

Ed Blackburn, the late, retired, newspaperman, would be enjoying Just Visitin, by Joan Upton Hall, the retired English teacher.  I know I do.  They've both been captivated, if not incarcerated, by our jails.

Her volume is chock-full of about 50 jails across the state which can be visited by tourists especially because they've been converted to modern use by local historical societies, art galleries, jail history fans, bed and breakfast conversions, commercial use, office use, and yes, friends and neighbors, even a residence.  Some figure a one among several structures at the same site.   Arranged alphabetically by town from Albany to Wharton, Hall focuses on about 50 small town calabooses, mostly county sponsored.  One or more photo introduces each entry with a short narrative of colorful stories and technical notes that can continue for up to a fifth page. Many have been tagged by the National Register and Texas state historical markers.

A Texas state outline map carries symbols and makes your plans for visiting easier.  

The oldest jail included is the 1854 Karnes County first jail in Helena.  Hellions in the area included a two-man duel in which the "men, tied together by one arm each, battled with short-bladed knives too short to strike to strike a vital organ, until one or both of them bled to death."  Hall's English teacher background must have included graphic descriptive skills.

Before you escape through the book's back door, you'll find several other categories: "Just Waiting" for the structures not open to the public, "Just Pretending" for Selma's Hooter's Bar & Grill, "Jail Residence" for the Benjamin hoosegow, and "Just Abandoned" for, well, derelicts.  The following short glossary is technical about construction, locking systems and mechanisms such as the "squint box."

Pick up a pass, and squint at the book.  The chapterlettes are alluring.

Lunar Braceros - Sanchez and Pita

    Lunar Braceros, 2125-2148.  A novella by Rosaura Sanchez and Beatrice Pita.  National City, Califas:  Calaca Press, 2009.  120 pages, paperback, ISBN 978-0-9843359-0-9, $15

http://www.calacapress.com  http://myspace.com/calacalanda

    Calaca provides this description:  "A futuristic sci-fi novella from the perspective of the underdog by Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita.  Featuring cover art and illustrations by San Diego, Califas artist Mario A. Chacon.  Twenty-second century Cholos living on Cali-Texas Reservations have few options.  One of them is signing up as Moon Tecos, technicians disposing of Earth's waste on Lunar sites.  After discovering that their Teco contracts are one-way tickets, the Lunar Braceros are forced to take matters into their own hands."

    Authors Sanchez and Pita are both college professors; Sanchez having gotten her Ph.D. from UT, thereby accounting for some of the very light Texas connection in the plot which prefers the West Coast.

The writing follows in the fragmentary tradition with changing type font to accent the changing persons' perspective.  Largely the pieces are "letters" to Pedro, a young son, still on earth and subject to the capitalist hegemony that rules the Earth through the New Imperial Order.  Shifting eco-political boundaries have created Cali-Texas which also includes Northern Mexico, Alaska, and Hawaii.  To some readers, the novella may evoke some post-modernist forms.

       It's a rather creative, if difficult to follow, plot which shifts from California to the Moon to sites in Mexico and South American locales.  Earth and the Moon are controlled by giant conglomerates which have corralled the poor into Reservations to serve as a quasi-slave labor force for the vast human population.  The Moon serves as a gigantic waste dump for radioactive material and for mining.  At the volume's conclusion, Pedro is grown and beset with the same problems as his forebearers – how to overthrow the capitalists and set up a cooperative, utopian society.    Towards the end, things get so bad that the revenge emerges as an acceptable option to motivate readers. Much of the narrative is sci-fi technical narrative of life on the Moon where a revolt ignites.

    Texas figures very little in frequency and content.  Texas serves as a birthplace for one principal.   Texas and the Southwest are admired for their spaciousness and openness to mobility.  Central Texas is admired because Central Texas is admirable.  Houston seems to be a hated center of control, especially the space program, and is to be avoided at all costs, even to preferring Tierra del Fuego.

    Even so, Lunar Braceros is refreshing for its sweep of terrain and politics and philosophy.

The Shimmer - David Morrell

    The Cuckleburr brings a review of The Shimmer by David Morrell.  The comments begin:

"The Shimmer is an engrossing and suspense packed thriller from the pen of Rambo creator, David Morrell. Set in and around the fictional Rostov, Texas, The Shimmer's about mysterious lights in the sky near the small town. Are they so much more than they appear to be or just some geological anomaly as some think? An out of town policeman's search to discover their source unveils centuries old sightings, hidden government projects and that his marriage is suddenly in turmoil.  Read more at

http://www.cuckleburr.com/book-review-the-shimmer-by-david-morrell

A Fantasic Fiction review begins: "When a high-speed chase goes terribly wrong, Santa Fe police officer Dan Page watches in horror as a car and gas tanker explode into flames. Torn with guilt that he may be responsible, Page returns home to discover that his wife, Tori, has disappeared.  //  Frantic, Page follows her trail to Rostov, a remote town in Texas ...."  Read more at

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/m/david-morrell/shimmer.htm

Tell your friends in Marfa about this one.

Beyond the Alamo - Raul Ramos

        Raul Ramos makes a guest posting on the University of North Carolina Press blog regarding his Beyond the Alamo: Forging Mexican Ethnicity in San Antonio, 1821-1861. 

Ramos begins:   "This Saturday marks the anniversary of the Battle of the Alamo in 1836, the battle that ended the 13-day siege on the fort by the Mexican Army.  The date carries added meaning this year as the Texas State Board of Education decides on the social studies standards affecting the education of the state's public school children.  Debates over the standards have garnered national attention especially since they impact how textbooks will be written for the nation's largest market.  It was the subject of a recent New York Times Magazine cover story.  When it comes to Texas history, few if any events carry the emotional weight of the Alamo.  The governor even invokes the memory of Texas Independence to score political points with the anti-Washington crowd."  Read more at
http://uncpressblog.com/2010/03/05/politics-of-texas-history/

Falling in a Circle - a Collaborative Texas Novella

Mike Kearby is a skilled Texas author with a record of writing good books for the YA market.  He also coordinates The Collaborative Novel project involving Texas high school students from ten schools.  The project eventually produces a novel year year.  This year they offer a free e-book version of the work to any junior high, middle school, or high school librarian who requests one.

 

The student writers also visually designed the book as well as contributed the plot and writing.  Real-life issues come into focus.  "This year's project speaks of students with disabilities. One of this year's writer, Marcus Parks, is disabled and he wrote the afterword for the book."

 

If your junior, middle school, or high school library would like to receive a complimentary copy of the 50 page book, Falling in a Circle, e-mail Mike at - kearb@hughes.net  and he will e-mail a PDF. version back to you. The file size is 278 kb

Kearby summarizes the volume as "A collaborative effort by ten Texas high schools, Falling in a Circle explores the cruelty often passed along to those among us with physical disabilities. The novella provides its audience with a fascinating glimpse into one character's emotional pain, and internal conflict. Will Kat learn from her past and cope with her future? Or will she continue Falling in a Circle?"

 

The back cover blurb for the book is below:

"Kat Morelli, a student at Cedar Lake High School , gains attention from her peers by making fun of other students …especially those who are handicapped or disabled. Before her senior year, Kat receives a devastating diagnosis from her doctor. She has bone cancer. The cancer is so widespread that doctors must to remove part of her lower leg, leaving Kat to endure the same cruel jokes she once delivered thoughtlessly on her classmates."

This is not the same 2006  Noah's Ride: A Collaborative Novel, by Phyllis Allen, Judy Alter, Mike Blackman, Mike Cochran, Jeff Guinn, Mary Dittoe Kelly, Elmer Kelton, James Ward Lee, James Reasoner and Mary Rogers.

  See Mike at http://www.mikekearby.com

Rails Around Houston - Douglas Weiskopf

      Rails Around Houston.  By Douglas L. Weiskopf.  Charleston, SC:  Arcadia Publishing, 2009.  paperback, many photos, 128 pages, ISBN 9780738558844, the ticket's only $21.99, round trip, front to back.  All aboard!

While I was the librarian in the Texas Room of the Houston Public Library, we'd get questions about railroads.  My first response was "Where's Doug?"  He'd be nearby as one of the senior reference staff, and the patron's question would go to Doug because he KNEW railroads.  I'd tell him, "You oughta write a book."  Well, yes, now you have Doug's Rails Around Houston,a wonderfully annotated pictorial issue, part of Arcadia's series "Images of Rail." 

Weiskopf also serves as the chapter historian of the Gulf Coast Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society.  Last week he roped me into visiting one of the local conventions of railroad modellings, and I have seen the light - the light coming around the bend of those marvelous set-ups. 

But Doug's focus is on the real stuff.  He can be caught browsing and mulling over local train yards.  He's even inserted an 1888 drawing (Courtesy Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum) of Houston's Southern Pacific train yard in the Rails Around Houston.  Houston's train yards are fundamental to the area's history.  In fact as the frontispiece pictorial poster shows Houston's slogan was once "Houston:  Where Seventeen Railroads Meet the Sea."

The photos come from several sources, Doug, Houston's HMRC, George Werner's private Collection (George was our local tutor on railroading), Tom Marsh's Collection, the Temple Museum, and elsewhere.

Weiskopf's introductions and annotations genuinely boost the readers' grasp of the images; he begins with charterings during the Republic of Texas and then the

The strong point of the images is certainly the engines and cars, Weiskopf includes a good diversity of passenger interiors, portraits of potentates, bridges, stations and sheds, alluring travel graphics of the early period, and even the old Sunset Hospital.  And, oh my goodness, he's included photos of the North Shore Interurban AND Houston's 1955 prototype, overhead, monorail.

What's my favorite? Well, on page 43 you'll find the aerial shot of Edgewood Yard in its glorious splay of maybe 50 tracks.  This capillary action on the ground recalls the old Marshall, Texas yard over and through which I walked countless times in my youth.  Doug, thanks for Rails Around Houston and the memories.  Oh, and give me a call; a friend has asked me a question that's right down your tracks?

No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed - Orozco

The Feminist Review comments on Cynthia Orozco's new volume: 

The review begins:  "So often, when studying the history of civil rights in the United States in school, the curriculum concentrates on the struggles faced by African Americans and white women. The plights of other minority groups though, such as Asian Americans or Hispanic Americans, are often omitted from the textbooks. In those rare instances when these other groups are mentioned, their histories are condensed into a paragraph or side note. Cynthia E. Orozco attempts to shed some light on one of these ignored civil rights movements in her book, No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed. Her chronicle is a fascinating exploration at an overlooked chapter of American history." 

Now, everyone's allowed to read more about it at

http://feministreview.blogspot.com/2010/02/no-mexicans-women-or-dogs-allowed-rise.html

Valleysong - Texas Rio Writers

A Book Hunter's Journal provides a review of VALLEYSONG: An Anthology Echoing the Rhythm and Cadence of Life in the Rio Grande Valley by the Texas Rio Writers.   The review begins with a colorful title:

Of Pollitos, Life, Swimming Holes & H.E.B.: The Echos of the Rio Grande Valley

     "The most important thing in any culture is stories, a history. Folklore that is passed from father to son across generations are essential. I don't know where I would be had it not been for the "camp fire" stories from my  grandfather, or those moralistic tales told by my grandmother. Valleysong is a collection of such stories, essays that remember the past of looking toward the future. 

And that is where my crux begins. How can both appreciate and frown upon a book?"  Read more of the review at

http://ihuntbooks.blogspot.com/2010/02/of-pollitos-life-swimming-holes-heb.html

Derby Girl - Shauna Cross

Ambrosia Salad reviews Derby Girl (the movie's Juno) by Shauna Cross.  For YA and adult.  An extract from the review reads:

Bliss' "only friend is the beautiful Pash Amini who moved into town and shares the same indie rock spirit as Bliss. They spend most of their free time slaving away at the "Oink Joint," a gross barbecue restaurant that all the local hicks frequent. The only thing that gets them through the hell of small town Texas life is each other. That, and imagining finding the perfect rocker boyfriends whilest getting the hell out of Bodeen.// But everything seems to change when Bliss picks up a flier for Roller Derby while shopping in downtown Austin with her mother and sister one day."

Read more at

http://ambrosiasaladbookreviews.blogspot.com/2010/01/derby-girl-shauna-cross-rating-7-out-of.html

Cibolero - Kermit Lopez

La Bloga and Charlie Vázquez: Latino Musings on Literature review the Kermit Lopez novel, Ciboleros.

La Bloga begins

"I'll start by going out on one of my habitual limbs to say I'd nominate this one for the Premio Aztlán Literary Prize. No, I don't think it's as passionately written as last year's winner, Across a Hundred Mountains by Reyna Grande, but hell, she raised the bar so high, authors are going to be scrambling for some time to catch up with her."  Read more at

http://labloga.blogspot.com/2007/11/cibolero-by-kermit-lopez-review.html

Charlie Vazquez begins

"Kermit Lopez's Cibolero is the story of Antonio Baca, a retired cibolero (buffalo hunter) born and raised in 19^th-century New Mexico via several generations of what were, at the time, Mexican citizens. But once the American Civil War is over, American expansion takes a turbulent turn, and what had once been New Spain and indigenous lands before that are violently incorporated into the United States of America. Antonio's family is ambushed by Texas Rangers while he's away. They try to kill his son and kidnap his daughter Elena. Determined to return her to his family, he sets out on a "hunt," tracking her vicious captors through the dramatic landscapes of the southwest territories, before it's too late."  Read more at

http://charlievazquez.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/latino-book-tour-%C2%A1cibolero/

 

Jerry Bywaters, Lone Star Printmaker - Niewyk

   Jerry Bywaters, Lone Star Printmaker: A Study of His Print Notebook, with a Catalogue of His Prints and a Checklist of His Illustrations and Ephemeral Works.  By Ellen Buie Niewyk, Foreword by Ron Tyler, With personal reminiscences by Mary Vernon and Frances Bearden.  Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, dist by TAMU Consortium, 2007. 12x9. 208 pp. 5 color, 34 b&w reproductions. 22 b&w photos. 111 illus. Bib. Index. ISBN 978-0-87074-519-5,  cloth   $35.00  http://www.tamu.edu/upress/

The collaborative team for this remarkable retrospective survey of  Jerry Bywaters' work includes Ellen Niewyk, curator of the Bywaters Special Collections housed in the Hamon Arts Library at SMU, Ron Tyler, director of Fort Worth's Amon Carter Museum of Art, Mary Vernon, SMU art teacher, and Frances Bearden, Bywaters's secretary at the Dallas Museum of Art. 

Most artists do not combine the tasks of original artwork and the subsequent printing of copies, but Bywaters did just that.  Most artist's quixotic lives resist their self-documentation.  For over 10 years, 1935-1948 Bywaters kept a journal of his progress and techniques, and Niewyk deciphers that work to further illuminate his art, printmaking, art criticism via the Dallas Morning News, contributions as a principal originator of and Director of the DMA in Fair Park, and teaching at SMU.  His influence was enormous.  Needless to say, the coffee-table size volume is delightful.

Bywaters (1906-1989) was born to a Paris, Texas couple, began drawing early, came to Dallas with the family, and earned a B.A. from SMU in 1926.  After a period in Europe and the American Northeast, he returned to Big D and drew architectural images.  Dallas' State Fair became a recurring scene of activity and inspiration.  At the time Dallas was big on Texas, and Diego Rivera's interpretation of Mexico added to his natural inclination to interpret the American Southwest.  His early style reflected influences including Matisse and Braque.  Some rather engagingly playful.

Printmaking seriously engaged his life in lithographic printmaking after a visit of Thomas Hart Benton as Bywaters helped organize the Dallas Print and Drawing Collectors Society in 1935 and the circuit of Lone Star Printmakers in 1938.  By Mutual adoption Bywaters fit right into Texas's writing circles including Tinkle, Dobie, Webb, and the rest of the gang, but art was his life.

The book's photos are engrossing.  You see his printing press and stones, tools,  facsimiles of the journal, plus a casual photo of him outside at a gas station in the Big Bend.  But the bulk of the tome is a gallery of his prints, each with detailed annotations.

Gargantua, the Lomax Victorian home in its shambled condition, is dated 1935 evokes a feeling of Halloween grotesque.  Old Clown (1936) immediately projects the hard life of a Carnie.  Mexican Mother (1936) and Mexican Lily Vendor  draw heavily from Rivera.  The Surgeons (1940) is executed in sharp black and white planes.  On the Ranch (1941) is about as Daliesque as a Southwestern scene can be. 

The back section on "Ephemeral Works" demonstrates Bywaters' skilled book imagery.  He illustrated the first book of the SMU Press, Geiser's Naturalists of the Frontier (1937).  Private printings included Dobie's Juan Oso Christmas card.  The once very vigorous Tardy Publishing concern used him often as in Ehrenberg's With Milam and Fannin. Of course Stanley Marcus sought him for the Book Club of Texas as in Dobie's Tales of the Mustang, and again under the Somesuch imprint with Frontier Tales of the White Mustang.  SMU's Southwest Review thirstily drew from the Bywaters well, even for their letterhead!  But his work was sought out by outlanders; the Saturday Review of Literature's May 16, 1942 used him for their cover of the special issue on "The Southwest: Inventory and Sampling. My favorite?  Maybe the enigmatic portrait of John Lomax. 

If your library is lucky enough to have Bywaters' 12 from Texas large portfolio, ask them to make an exhibit of it with this new tribute to a fine Texas artist and printmaker.  Book review by Will Howard.

David Crockett in Congress - Boylston and Wiener

      David Crockett in Congress: The Rise and Fall of the Poor Man's Friend: With Collected Correspondence, Selected Speeches and Circulars.  By James R. Boylston and Allen J. Wiener.  Houston: Bright Sky Press, 2009. Hardback with colorful pictorial jacket, 8.25" x 10", 340 pages, some holographic document reproductions, 16 4-color photos, most of which are a wonderful gallery of Crockett portraits, ISBN 978-1-933979-51-9, $29.95

http://www.brightskypress,com

 

Not since Peña's Diary and Kilgore's How Did Davy Die has such an interesting and revealing volume come forth for the passionate friends and foes on the perennial Crockett. The authors scoured sources to find Crockett's writings while a U.S. Congressman from Tennessee.  From these Boylston and Wiener draw a credible biography of an intelligent man with sharp beliefs and remarkable public relations skills. 

            The recent painting of Crockett merely as a weak captive of his public persona has gained the status of a songster's refrain.  But here you'll find David Crockett as a truly brave individual who was committed to upholding his constituents' rights (including native American) by vigorous efforts despite the threats to is political life.  His physical life he would expend in the similar cause in the Alamo.

            Crockett began his public career as a justice of the peace and as a Jacksonian supporter as any reasonable fellow ought do in Tennessee, but when Mr. Crockett went to Washington, the President's denial of land rights and odd inveigling over the Bank of American turned Crockett into a outright opponent – a task requiring more courage than "fighting a bear when he was only three."  That strident and articulate stance eventually met the Jacksonian immoveable object, and he lost his Congressional seat, and then he came to Texas while leaving the rest to reside in hell. 

Boylston and Wiener volume is half interpretive narrative (heavily footnoted) and half transcriptions of Crockett's and others' writings mined from sources across the nation.  The latter is a treasure trove of often annotated primary source reading, much previously unpublished.   Letters, requests for newspaper articles, Congressional material, circulars, speeches, etc. number to well over a hundred.  There are calm reasonings, vitriolic accusations, personal concerns, a bit of parody, and other diverse forms.  He had a national stage and genuine ability to switch from a backwoodsman profile to careful manager of news releases to demonstrate his sophistication.

    If you think you know David Crockett, get the volume, and read aloud his own words.  - WH

Amigoland - Oscar Casares

   Amigoland by Oscar Casares is reviewed by Virginia Alanis in Somos en escrito under the title "Rebel With a Cause." The review begins:

 

"Amigoland is the debut novel of Oscar Casares. It opens with a-day-in-the-life of a recent arrival in a nursing home after suffering a minor heart attack. Ninety-one-year-old Fidencio Rosales, a retired mail carrier, wants to escape from the nursing home and live anywhere but there. But his daughter/guardian will not agree to take him home to live with her, nor will she let him live alone.
The nursing home called Amigoland is replete with rules and regulations against which the protagonist is on the verge of rebelling. Set in contemporary Brownsville .... "  Read more at

http://somosenescrito.blogspot.com/2010/02/rebel-with-cause-amigoland.html

America Libre

      America Libre. By Raul Ramos y Sanchez. NY: Grand Central Publishing (formerly Warner Books), 2009, paperback, 373 pages, ISBN: 978-0446507752. $13.99.  http://www.HatchetteBookGroup.com   Winner of the International Latino Book Award for Best Novel.  Previously issued by the author in slightly different version. http://raulramos.com/ Represented by the Castiglia Literary Agency.

Novelist and polemicist Ramos y Sanchez, Cuban-born and a founding partner of BRC Marketing ad agency established in 1992, adds a volume of alternative history near the line of Harry Turtledove's treatment of the American Civil War or an alternative future.  His public relations skills are skillfully employed here.  The book is sectioned into two parts, the first being "The Rio Grande Incident," but it quickly shifts away from Texas and the greater part of the three-year plot continues in Los Angeles, California and elsewhere long before the second part begins as "The Quarantine and Relocation Act." 

The first novel that comes to this reader's mind is Imperium in Imperio by Sutton Griggs published in 1899 wherein African Texans successfully establish a large chunk of Texas as an independent republic for Africans.  The other book is Fritz Leiber's 1964 A Specter is Haunting Texas which, though interesting, usually rings shallow also.  Some may allude to McCarthy's apocalyptic The Road whose inspiration came in El Paso.  But Ramos intends a regional setting, the American Southwest, and rings more deeply than Griggs and Leiber, although Texas as a literary piece of furntiture is by definition virtually all things evil.

Beyond that, Ramos' characters, though still intended as issue bearers, are more believable than those of Griggs and Leiber. Ramos begins this work of Hispanic suppression and self-assertion by placing the volatile spark in San Antonio, Texas. The plot opens with a nasty incident that balloons out of proportion as a faction of the Texas National Guard goes out of medodramatic control at, yes, the Alamo.  From there, vigilante groups form and the Texas setting is thereafter a bed of racism to occasionally drive the more simple adrenaline resource. 

As the plot shifts to LA, the principal character Manolo Suarez,has a wife Rosa and children who serve to deepen his domestic qualities and offer moderation.  Manolo is carefully lured into La Defensa del Pueblo organization by the rich, attractive, Uruguay-born Jo Herrera whose strident feminine character adds a sharper texture as she slides Mano into accepting violence as a necessary tactic.

Barrio Latinos respond with self-defense groups and rioting and the tit-for-tat violence scatters across the US.  "Anglo" US is figured as demanding segregation "camps" ala the Japanese camps of WW II and Congress accedes to the pressure.  And that's not the bottom of the pit.  However, Manolo emerges as a leader in the peoples' movement while beset with family challenges and counter-pointed by Jo.

Ramos' PR skills are asserted.  On one occasion he uses a loud jackhammer as a necessary "device" to justify the characters almost screaming a conversation.   He also deftly uses a fictional author to insert the old mythology of Spanish and Mexican control and ownership of the Southwest (much as it was a myth that the Republic of Texas and the US controlled it until the combined 400-year European/Colonial genocidal wars and thefts against the natives succeeded widely about 1880).  The struggle between stereotypes moves fast-pacedly along, and Ramos inserts occasional bits of surrealism as when an Aryan fanatic named O'Connor denies awareness that Anglos once suppressed the Irish and the German.  That one may have been humor, as if two incongruent objects occupied the same space successfully, prompting a laugh. 

In realism, Manolo confronts the plain task of keeping his job and his integrity as he transforms from patriotic American to protector of his newly rediscovered pueblo.  And there's a critical choice.  Is his family safer with him or in a "Relocation Camp" in North Dakota? - a matter Ramos treats gravely.

To no surprise, TV, radio, newspapers, the blog jocks, and other media fan the flames. The confrontation erupts into violence in Washington DC.  Before long, international connections come into play.  Eventually, as the weight of the Federal forces appear to bring temporary calm to the scene, the tense novel ends.   

Despite the necessary bi-polar racism and sexism, readers will be pulled along with the characters' challenges and well dialogued lines.  El Nuevo Alamo and Pancho Land form the final two volumes of the trilogy.  Will there emerge a Hispanic Republic?  Texas historians may wish to invoke comparative commentary with the Las Casas Revolt, Republic of the Rio Grande, the Plan of San Diego, and Crystal City.  Younger readers may be directed to Lunar Braceros by Sanchez and Pita with its Cali-Tex base.  Raul Ramos y Sanchez's America Libre is recommended for avid and new fans of the growing Tejano consciousness and those willing to look in a cracked mirror of the future. - WH

Conversations with Texas Writers - Leonard and Cearley

    A 2006 reveiw by Don Graham of Conversations with Texas Writers, edited by Frances Leonard and Ramona Cearley,  is available in the Great Plains Quarterly online as part of the University of Nebraska's Digital Commons project. The review begins:

"This book contains fifty interviews with "Texas" writers, including one "interview" with a dead writer, the pulp hero Robert E. Howard (author of the Conan books, etc.). It's actually Howard's biographer whu's interviewed, which is odd and conveys a significance that's unwarranted. The book is also a bit Austin-centric, as twenty of the authors I ive in the capital city.

There are many odd things about this book. One of the oddest is that the term "Texas writer" is newr meaningfully defined."

Read more at http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1144&context=greatplainsquarterly

Adventures With a Texas Humanist - James Ward Lee

      A 2005 reveiw by Steve Davis of James Ward Lee's Adventures with a Texas Humanist is available in the Great Plains Quarterly online as part of the University of Nebraska's Digital Commons project.  The review begins

"An Alabaman by birth, James Ward Lee is well positioned to understand a basic fallacy about Texas's image as a "western" state. Despite popular notions of cowboys, cactus, and wideopen spaces, Lee reminds us that Texas was essentially "southern" for much of its history. Up until the 1950s, cotton far exceeded cattle as a measure of the Texas economy. The literary arts followed in those economic footsteps. While "western" writers such as Larry McMurtry and J. Frank Dobie are now seen as emblematic of the state, Lee argues that "the literary heart and soul of Texas used to be located [in the cotton belt] east of the Brazos."" 

Read more at http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1165&context=greatplainsquarterly