The Texana Review

Characters and Critters by Skipper Duncan

Anyone who has spent any time in West Texas (and even those who haven’t) know that West Texans are famous for telling stories, some true, some not-so-true. Of those that tell the stories, some are good at it, others aren’t. Skipper Duncan, in his “Characters and Critters,” is one of the good ones. Mr. Duncan pulls from a lifetime of first-hand experience and observation to create a collection of short stories that not only brings a deep belly-laugh and snicker but also insights into some of West Texas history. Especially interesting is how he tells of his personal transition from struggling rancher to successful hunting outfitter and the cast of characters and events that tickled his fancy along the way, all of which he now shares with us in “Characters and Critters.” When I spoke with him the other day to set up an interview for The Texana Review, he said he was working on a follow-up collection of more stories. I anticipate it will be at least as entertaining as this one. As a storyteller myself, I highly recommend this book.

 

You can buy it at Amazon.com.  Click HERE

 

© Copyright 2012 Edward Blackburn. All rights reserved.

Annmarie McArthur’s new book shares recipe for small business success

Austin author Annmarie McArthur—chef by trade, entrepreneur by heart, and single mom twenty-four-seven—has learned many lessons the hard way. After building her corporate catering business to be the largest in the city, she ultimately lost everything in a devastating crash. Determined to see this setback as a catalyst, not an end, she developed a proven plan for how to manage a business from the inside out so that people can enjoy life and ultimately be successful.

In her new book, “Recipes from a Life: Essential Ingredients for Your Business Success,” McArthur shares these lessons, empowering small business owners everywhere to employ practical steps to making their dream a reality while still maintaining their sanity.

“Pull up your chair to Annmarie's table—it's the place to be for honest and hard-won business advice... Learn how adopting her unique combo of can-do attitude, people skills, and practical planning can help you make your business both fun and profitable!” reader Susan Stotesbery said.

Published by Tate Publishing and Enterprises.

McArthur lives in Austin, Texas, where she balances life as an author, public speaker, and single mom working in the corporate world.

For more information, visit www.recipesfromalife.com.

Order from Amazon -

Texas Tales Illustrated

Drawing upon the increasing popularity of graphic or illustrated novels among young readers, Texas Tales Illustrated: The Revolution is an innovative retelling of the Texas revolution for independence and is sure to become an invaluable classroom resource. Author Mike Kearby and illustrator Mack White designed the book for use in seventh-grade Texas history courses in response to a need for more interactive textbooks, which will appeal to the learning styles of students in today’s overwhelmingly visual media culture.

White’s detailed line drawings recall classic comic book style and capture the dramatic tension of the battle, while Kearby’s narration is enticing, full of intriguing historical detail. The comic pages are supplemented with traditional text, including excerpts of historical documents and visual materials such as maps and battlefield schematics.

Students at three North Texas middle schools found the graphic format “easy to read,” the illustrations “exciting” and well executed. Many responded that they would check out the book from their school libraries—even if the text were not required reading.

 

MIKE KEARBY, a retired high school reading and English teacher, is the author of seven novels. The Road to a Hanging, Ride the Desperate Trail, and Ambush at Mustang Canyon completed his Young Adult trilogy published by Dorchester Publishing (NY). Ambush at Mustang Canyon was honored as a Spur Award Finalist from the Western Writers of America. Dorchester Publishing will publish The Taken in November 2010, and Dead Man’s Saddle in 2011.

More on Mike Kearby HERE

 

Native Texan MACK WHITE is an illustrator and comics creator who has been publishing professionally for twenty years. His artwork and stories have appeared in numerous publications throughout the world, including Heavy Metal, Details, Old West Journal, Zero Zero, Hotwire, Top Shelf, El Vibora, and Strapazin. In 2004, he co-edited the political comics anthology. Most recently, his work was featured in the Yale Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories. He currently resides in Austin, Texas.

More on Mack White HERE

TCU Press titles are available at your local bookstore or by calling 800.826.8911

or at Amazon.com

HERE

 

Technorati Tags: Texana Review,Ed Blackburn,Mike Kearby,Mack White,Texas,Texas history

Devils River: Treacherous Twin to the Pecos

Patrick Dearen has a new book.  It’s title is Devils River: Treacherous Twin to the Pecos, 1535-1900, from TCU Press.  It examines the history of a notorious river in southwestern Texas: the Devils River.

He starts by describing the Spanish explorers and other settlers from the Americas who encountered the Devils River, then known as Rio San Pedro (Saint Peter’s River), and their difficulties in traversing the region. He relates a multitude of different hardships, ranging from Indian attacks, impassable fords, unpredictable weather, and long routes with little water. The advancement of the railroad into Devils River territory brought its own share of troubles—train robberies became more common, and outlaws often passed through the area on their way to Mexico. Military outposts were built and abandoned at various points along the river, and companies of Texas Rangers patrolled the area in an attempt to keep the peace. Yet despite all their effort, the Devils River and the surrounding regions were a law unto themselves, and it would take hundreds of years and much bloodshed to civilize the area.

Devils River is at heart a scholarly work, but it is also much more. Dearen takes the time to engage readers in the events by introducing the characters involved and showing not only their actions but their words and thoughts as well. His retellings of each occurrence make readers feel as if they are actually present at that exact moment in history. It is a fascinating read, for scholars and non-historians alike.

 

Patrick Dearen is the author of nine nonfiction books and nine novels and is a recognized authority on the lower Pecos River country. He grew up in Sterling City, Texas, and earned a bachelor of journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. His nonfiction works include Castle Gap and the Pecos Frontier, Portraits of the Pecos Frontier, Crossing Rio Pecos, A Cowboy of the Pecos, and Halff of Texas. Through his books The Last of the Old-Time Cowboys and Saddling Up Anyway, Dearen has also preserved the stories of the last generation of cowhands who plied their trade before mechanization. His novels include Perseverance, set along the rails in Depression-era Texas.

More on Patrick Dearen HERE.

TCU Press titles are available at your local bookstore or by calling 800.826.8911

or

at Amazon.com

HERE

 

Technorati Tags: Texana Review,Ed Blackburn,Patrick Dearen,Pecos,Pecos River,history Texas history

TCU Press releases Jan Reid’s Comanche Sundown

Comanche Sundown is the story of the great war chief Quanah Parker, a freed slave and cowboy named Bose Ikard, and women they love.

In 1869 Quanah and Bose do their best to kill each other in a brutal fight on horseback in West Texas. But over several years, through the flash and chaos of war and killing they discover that they are friends, not enemies. They change from violent unformed youths into men of courage and decency.

The son of the ferocious warrior Nocona and the tragic captive Texan Cynthia Ann Parker, Quanah suffers the wound of being slurred and rejected by many Comanches as someone of impure blood and certain bad luck. When told he cannot marry his youthful love Weckeah, he rides off and joins another band of his people in the canyonlands and plains of the Texas Panhandle. Later, when Quanah has just emerged as a war chief in a daring rout of army cavalry, in defiance of elders and tradition he elopes with Weckeah and leads a following of the wildest Comanche bunch of all.

The enslaved son of a white physician, Bose is freed by the Civil War and rides on trail drives of longhorns into New Mexico Territory that are led by the pioneering Charles Goodnight. Bose winds up captured, utilized, and eventually valued by Quanah and his people. That period in young Bose’s life brings him into intoxicating friendship with Quanah’s other wife, To-ha-yea, a Mescalero Apache and born heart-breaker.

Comanche Sundown lays out a sprawling and plausible recast of Southwestern history that brings Pat Garrett, Billy the Kid, Bat Masterson, Colonel Ranald “Bad Hand” Mackenzie, and General William T. Sherman into one fray. In the tradition of Thomas Berger’s Little Big Man, William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner, Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, and Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, Reid’s novel offers a rich blend of historical detail, exquisite eye for the terrain and the animals, and insight into the culture, customs, poetry, and dignity of Native Americans caught up in a desperate fight to survive.

Jan Reid is a veteran writer-at-large for Texas Monthly and has contributed dozens of articles to Esquire, GQ, Slate, Men’s Journal, Garden & Gun, the New York Times Magazine, and many other leading publications. His highly praised nonfiction books include The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock, The Bullet Meant for Me, and Rio Grande.

Reid’s first novel, Deerinwater, was published in 1985. Since then, he has devoted time between his many projects and some perilous adventures to the research and crafting of Comanche Sundown. Praised for the versatility of his writing, Reid has won honors that include a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Dobie-Paisano Fellowship, and awards by PEN and the Texas Institute of Letters.

Born in Abilene, Texas, Reid grew up in Wichita Falls and for many years has made his home in Austin with his wife, Dorothy Browne.

TCU Press books are available at your local bookseller or by calling 800.826.8911.

Technorati Tags: Texana Review,Ed Blackburn,Texas,Stories

TCU Press publishes Grace and Gumption: The Cookbook

TCU Press has announced the release of Grace and Gumption: The Cookbook, the follow-up book to Grace and Gumption: Stories of Fort Worth Women. The  book’s fourteen talented and engaging authors have once again mined the personal papers of women in Fort Worth to create a fresh look at life in Cowtown, said Rebecca Sharpless of Texas Christian University. Readers will gain glimpses of pantries, kitchens, and dining rooms of the past and learn about the women who presided over them.

Grace and Gumption: The Cookbook combines the history of Fort Worth and the city’s brilliant, innovative women with their recipes. For some of the women cooking was a joy, for others it was just one more chore to complete so they could get on to more interesting things, which means that some of the women didn’t leave cooking trails. The contributors have been inventive in finding “related” recipes—some of them wonderful, some so complex you may not want to try. Some attempt was made to standardize the recipes but it was not possible in all cases—they would have lost their charm, said the editor and one of the authors, Katie Sherrod.

In Grace and Gumption: The Cookbook, we learn a great deal about what the people of Fort Worth have eaten over the past century and a half, and so we discern much about what the people have been about. The cookbook takes a new approach to American culinary studies, recording the lives of Fort Worth women as well as discussing the food that they prepared and ate. Sharpless says, in her forward to the book, that while many American women, particularly Anglos, remained within their homes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Grace and Gumption tells us about women who set aside those boundaries and spent their energies in works charitable and for profit. These women taught about food, and they cooked to create businesses of their very own, some of which, like Pulido's Restaurant and Mrs. Baird's Bread, endure today.

Grace and Gumption: The Cookbook is a book to cook from and to read for pleasure, although there are some recipes that Sherrod recommends readers not try at home. This book provides a window into the lives of Fort Worth women that will engage readers and explore an even more intimate aspect of the lives of these outstanding women.

Here's the Table of Contents - 

“Cooking on the Frontier,” by Joyce M. Williams

“Cooking at Our Lady of Victory,” by Brenda Taylor Matthews

“The Modern Woman,” by Ruth Karbach

“Ranch Women, Cowgirls, and Wildcatters,” by Judy Alter

“Pig in a Pit, Stagecoach Kisses and Eating Heaven: Food and Philanthropy in Fort Worth,” by Ruth McAdams

“Serving the Children,” by Sherrie S. McLeRoy

“Cooking in the Barrio,” by Sandra Guerra-Cline

“Let My People Eat,” by Hollace Ava Weiner

“Colorful Palettes Make Colorful Palates,” by Joy Donovan

“Stirred In with Lots of Love, a Little Drama, and Duncan Hines™” by Jan Jones

“Regal Women in the Garden of Eden,” by Brenda Sanders-Wise

“Braving the Smoke—in the Back Room and in the Kitchen,” by Cindy C. Smolovik

“Cooking for a Living—Lucille Bishop Smith,” by Carol Roark

“Balancing Facts and Food in the Newsroom,” by Katie Sherrod

 

Grace and Gumption: The Cookbook is available at your favorite bookstore or may be ordered through University Publishing, 1-800-826-8911 or at www.Amazon.com.

Technorati Tags: Texana Review,Ed Blackburn,Books,Literature,Cookbook,History

TCU Press publishes Texas Poet Laureate 2009 Paul Ruffin - Paul Ruffin: New and Selected Poems

TCU Press has released Texas Poet Laureate 2009 Paul Ruffin’s new collection of poetry, Paul Ruffin: New and Selected Poems. Ruffin’s book is the fifth installment of the TCU Texas Poet Laureate series and is made possible by the TCU Vision in Action grant.

To those who read literary journals or mid-list popular books, Paul Ruffin is a well-known author and poet. Ruffin is prolific in his writing, having published over a thousand poems, short stories, novels, and nonfiction pieces with decades of unfailing artistry. Editor Billy Bob Hill writes in his introduction to Paul Ruffin: New and Selected Poems that he has long admired Ruffin’s use of poetic devices; he uses alliteration and subtle textured sounds throughout his poetry, making them likeably conversational while full of crafted sound patterns. Ruffin also employs whimsical narratives, coining the word “Necrofiligumbo” in “When the Mummy Became a Mommy.” But, Hill explains, the true power of this book comes from its storytelling. With the new material, readers will encounter compelling, often drop-dead funny storytelling.

Texas State University Regents’ Professor and Distinguished Professor of English at Sam Houston State University, Paul Ruffin is the founding editor of The Texas Review and founding director of Texas Review Press. He is the author of two novels, three collections of short stories, two books of essays, and six earlier collections of poetry. He is also a newspaper columnist and feature writer. Poems in this collection have appeared widely in journals in this country, including Poetry, Paris Review, Southern Review, Georgia Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review. He was selected as the 2009 Texas State Poet Laureate.

TCU Press books are available at your favorite bookstore or may be ordered by calling 1.800.826.8911.

The Far Canyon by Elmer Kelton

The Far Canyon, the sequel to Slaughter, was published in 1994 and won Elmer Kelton his sixth esteemed Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. With such accomplishments, it is easy to understand why, in 1995, the Western Writers of America voted Elmer Kelton the greatest western writer of all time.

In The Far Canyon, Kelton masterfully unveils for his reader the finality of the buffalo’s demise, the beginning of a time when cattle would replace the American bison on the southern plains and ultimately end the Plains Indian culture. The novel reveals the history of the period, up close and personal, so his readership can judge the impact of the period upon his characters.

The novel’s first chapter introduces Comanche warrior Crow Feather, whose situation is emblematic of a common recurring theme in all of Kelton’s works . . . change. Protagonist Jeff Layne is faced with the very same dramatic problem, the devastating threat to one’s self-concept inherent in change. Layne, the hide hunter from Slaughter, is weary of killing and death. He decides to return to South Texas, determined to earn his living with the newest resource on the plains, cattle. And the cultures collide.

Kelton eloquently reveals the impact of hide hunters on Plains Indian culture. Crow Feather realizes that no matter how many whites the Comanche kill, there will always be more “coming back.” Crow Feather also understands that his life and the lives of his wives and children will never be easy again. Are Layne and Crow Feather of a character that will allow them to escape a predetermined fate by reaching that far canyon, or will they simply perish under the cultural dictate of their historical time?

Elmer Kelton was voted All-Time Greatest Western Author by Western Writers of America. He received seven Spur Awards, four Wrangler Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Museum, and lifetime achievement awards from WWA, Western American Literature Association, and the Texas Institute of Letters. He was the author of more than fifty novels.

TCU Press titles are available at your local bookstore or by calling 800.826.8911.

A chat with Bob Fussell about "Unbridled Cowboy," an autobiography by his grandfather

Bob Fussell decided to take a book and some notes written by his grandfather, Joseph B. Fussell, about his life (grandfather's) in the southwest in the late 19th century and early 20th century and turn it into a book titled Unbridled Cowboy, recently published by Truman State University Press.

A runaway at 13-years old, an undercover Texas Ranger several years later and 40-some-odd other occupations in his lifetime, Mr. Joseph B. Fussell must have been a handful.

Bob Fussell shares with me his thoughts about his book and his grandfather.

Listen...

18 minutes

Music by the Dave Lambert Band under Creative Commons License Podshow Podsafe Music Network

Buy Unbridled Cowboy from Amazon.com

 

Stephanie Barko is a book publicist in Austin, Texas and has arranged a "virtual tour" for Unbridled Cowboy during the month of December.  Follow along!  Schedule's below:

12/01	The Texana Review-Podcasts
12/02	Texas History Page
12/04	Michy's Book Reviews
12/06	Writer's in the Sky
12/08	Western Sensibility
12/10	Western Americana
12/22	Rough Edges
12/24	Bookgeeks

Technorati Tags: Texana Review,Ed Blackburn,Texas,history

Elmer and Anni Kelton - a Love Story: Part Four

The last segment of my interview with renowned western author, Elmer Kelton, and his wife, Anni, about how they met in Austria at the end of World War II and eventually married.

You can listen to the audio here or go watch on TexanaTV

Listen...

13 minutes

Music by Barry McCabe under Creative Commons License

Watch... Go to TexanaTV

 

Find Elmer Kelton's books at your local bookstore or Amazon.com
HERE

Technorati Tags: Literature,western literature,Texana Review,TexanaTV,Ed Blackburn,Elmer Kelton,spur award Winner,Western Heritage Award,Texas