Tag: Texas

Review 2588: Bluebird, Bluebird

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Black Texas Ranger Darren Mathews is on suspension after he went to the aid of Rutherford McMillan, a man who has worked for his family for years. He is also having trouble with his wife, Lisa, who wants him to return to law school. Then a friend, Greg Heglund, an FBI agent in Houston, asks Darren to look unofficially at a situation in Lark in East Texas. There, the body of a Black man, an outsider, was found in the bayou and later the body of a White woman, a local, was also found there. Usually in that part of the country it’s the other way around, plus Lark hasn’t had a murder for years.

An interest for Darren is the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, and he finds in tiny Lark a major presence. The only two businesses in town are Geneva Sweet’s café with mostly Black patrons and an icehouse up the road packed with members of the ABT. When he arrives at Geneva Sweet’s Sweets, he finds the locals nervous and unwelcoming. Missy Dale’s body was found right behind the café. At Jeff’s Juice House, just up the road, where Missy was a waitress, he finds the all-White clientele belligerent and violent.

Then Rainie Wright arrives. She’s the widow of Michael Wright, the first victim, and she is distraught. She worries Darren, because she is from Chicago and has no idea how to behave in the rural South (and no, this novel is not set in the past).

A person Darren finds of interest is Wally Jefferson, a rich White man whose mansion is right across the highway from Geneva’s café and who treats her and the café with a proprietorial air. But Geneva is prone to telling him to get out of her place.

Darren is inclined to suspect Missy’s husband of the murders, since Missy was seen talking to Michael at the icehouse. But that doesn’t quite satisfy him. There are connections here that he doesn’t understand.

I’ve been looking around for a new mystery series to follow, and this novel by Locke has me wanting to look for more. I am familiar with East Texas, and she has the atmosphere down. There is plenty of action and some suspense in this novel. I have to admit that my suspicions fell on a culprit pretty quickly, and I sensed that the story would have something to do with an earlier crime, which it did. But I certainly had some surprises coming. The only think I didn’t like was the cliché of the cop who drinks too much. Bluebird, Bluebird is listed as the first of Locke’s Highway 59 series, so I’m not sure if the others feature the same protagonist or just the locale or both. I have driven on that highway so many times!

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Review 2481: Memorial

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Benson is a young Black gay man living in Houston with his Japanese boyfriend Mike. When Mike’s mother is due to arrive for a visit for the first time in years, Mike tells Benson that his father is dying and he’s going to Osaka to be with him, leaving his mother with Benson, who has never met her before.

While Benson navigates the situation with Mitsuko, Mike’s mother, he also considers his relationship with Mike, which has been deteriorating lately. For his part, Mike must work through his resentment that his father deserted him and his mother when he was a teen. That, and Eiju’s general prickliness.

This novel explores the difficulties both men have had with their families and their relationships with each other. Each man also tentatively begins getting to know another gay young man.

Although this novel is supposed to be funny, the humor went right over my head. I found it perceptive and sometimes touching, although I am not a fan of explicit sex scenes. I read it for my James Tait Black project.

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Review 2327: Chenneville

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John Chenneville, a Union officer, awakens in a field hospital in Virginia to find that the Civil War is over and he has been lying in a coma for months. He has a healing wound on his head where a chain hit him after an explosion. The war is over, but it takes him months to be well enough for the journey home to Bonnemaison in Missouri on the Mississippi.

Once home, he can tell something bad has happened, but he has to wait for his Uncle Basile to arrive from New Orleans to learn what it is. In the meantime, he occupies himself with trying to restore his ravaged estates. Finally, his uncle tells him that on another one of the family estates further south, his sister, her husband and baby have been murdered. His mother has gone to live with Uncle Basile and has not spoken since the event. After waiting longer to improve his strength and coordination, Chenneville sets off to avenge them.

He finds it is an open secret that they were murdered by a man named Dodd. Dodd was a deputy, and it’s clear that the sheriff is going to do nothing about it but has warned Dodd that someone is after him. After going on a wild goose chase, Chenneville learns that Dodd has fled southwest to Texas. He is killing people on the way, and Chenneville eventually finds himself a suspect for one of the murders.

Jiles seems to like writing about people on journeys, and she likes the setting of post-Civil War Texas. Chenneville finds in East Texas an area once more populous and prosperous, now wild and desolate. This novel is involving and eventful as you wonder how Chenneville can avenge his family without destroying his own life.

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Review 2285: The Color of Lightning

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I have read several of Paulette Jiles’s books that are set in post-Civil War Texas and depict a countryside that’s dangerous and beautiful at the same time. Another characteristic of these books is that they feature brief appearances by the main characters of her other books. I believe that The Color of Lightning is the first of these books. Unlike the others, though, it is about a person who really existed.

Britt Johnson is a black freedman who travels with his wife and children along with his ex-master and a group of fellow Kentuckians to Texas to get away from the war in 1863. They all live in a small community called Elm Creek in Young County, Texas, at the edge of the area occupied by settlers. Although they are living in the traditional raiding lands of the Kiowa and the Comanche, the older residents of the settlement say they haven’t seen a native since they moved there.

Britt has been rounding up cattle, but his real ambition is to buy teams of horses and freight wagons so he can start a freight service for the area. While the men of the settlement are on a trip to Weatherford to get supplies, a force of 700 Kiowa and Comanche attack the white and black settlers of Young County. Britt’s oldest son Jim is killed and his wife Mary and children Cherry and Jube are captured. Elizabeth Fitzgerald’s daughter Susan is killed, and Elizabeth and her granddaughter Minnie are taken.

The United States government has removed its corrupt Indian agents from Indian Territory and for a few years makes an experiment of turning the various reservations over to the administration of religious organizations. Samuel Hammond is a Quaker who reluctantly agrees to take over the Kiowa-Comanche reservation. He hopes to manage the reservation without using force or violence, but he goes to work with no understanding of these native peoples, trying to contain them on the reservation when they have always been wanderers, stop the raiding (which he didn’t even know about when he took the job), and make the natives into farmers when they consider that women’s work.

In the meantime, Britt begins a long trip north to the winter territory of the Kiowa and Comanche to trade for his wife and children. He is given unexpected help from a young Comanche brave named Tissoyo whom he befriends on his trip. While he’s on his way, the story shifts to the lives of Mary, Cherry, and Jube in the Kiowa camp.

I think this novel did a really good job of representing the viewpoints of all of its characters—the settlers, the native people, the captives, and the Indian agency administrator. The novel is exciting at times and deeply interesting. Jiles is getting to be one of my favorite writers.

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Review 2233: News of the World

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Shortly after the Civil War, Captain Kidd, 72-year-old veteran of three wars, rides around Texas reading the news in small towns. He was previously the owner of a print shop in San Antonio, but during the war, the Confederate government forced him to invest in their government bonds, so he ended up bankrupt.

Most of Texas is very dangerous, prone to raids by Native warriors and lawless. He is in Wichita Falls when a freight driver he knows asks him to take a girl—who was captured by the Kiowa four years earlier and has now been returned under threat—to her relatives near San Antonio. The driver has found her hard to control and has no freight to take to San Antonio. The Captain reluctantly agrees.

The girl, kidnapped from German immigrants, is named Johanna and is going to her aunt and uncle. However, she remembers nothing of her previous existence and is wild about being taken from the Kiowa.

The Captain and Johanna come to understand each other on this dangerous, difficult journey of around 400 miles. They have to cope with floods and such dangers as an attack by three men who want Johanna for a prostitution ring.

I had already seen the excellent movie starring Tom Hanks, but News of the World is even more involving. I was interested to re-encounter Simon the Fiddler, who is the main character of Jiles’s most recent book. Having looked at some of her other books, I see that she has set several of them in the same area and time, with characters who make brief appearances in each other’s novels.

I just loved this book. Jiles has created two unforgettable characters, and the novel is ultimately powerful and heart-warming. Descriptions of the land are lyrical, from its harsh aridity to its lushness.

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Review 1850: Simon the Fiddler

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I read Enemy Women a while back, another Jiles novel set during the American Civil War. Simon the Fiddler is set towards the end of the war and in its aftermath.

Simon Boudlin is a master fiddler who has been playing in East Texas trying to dodge the conscription men. He has a dream of earning enough money to buy a piece of land and settle down with a wife. However, the conscription men get him, and he finds himself toward the end of the war on Brazos de Santiago in the Confederate Army.

The men are soon in a strange position, because the war is officially over but no one has disbanded them. Then for no apparent reason, the Union army attacks them, resulting in many casualties. Later, we learn the attack was made because Union General Web wanted to earn some glory in battle. The Confederates manage to gain back their island, and then they surrender.

Simon, along with several other musicians, is asked to play for the officers during a celebration of the end of the war. So, it’s a mixed group of Union and Confederate musicians who play. Then, Simon spots a girl. She’s the Irish governess for General Webb’s daughter. Her name is Doris, and Simon learns that the General doesn’t let any young men near her.

Simon teams up with three of the musicians to form a band. Their plan is to go to Galveston and make money. So, they steal a boat and navigate to the ruined city of Galveston—Simon; Patrick, a boy boudrain player; Damon, a penny whistle player; and Dorotheo, a guitarist. But all the time, Simon is planning to buy his land and marry Doris.

This is a wandering tale full of incident and the flavor of a largely untamed Texas. It is written sparely, with occasional lyrical descriptions of the beauty of the Texas landscape. I liked this novel a lot and plan to look for more by Jiles, particularly News of the World, which I have managed to miss.

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Review 1720: Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream

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As a young adult in the late 60’s and 70’s, I did not have a high opinion of Lyndon Johnson. Although I was not political, like many people, I was against the Vietnam War. It wasn’t until I lived in Texas that I saw another side to Johnson, who was revered for, among other things, bringing electricity to rural Texas to ease the work of women.

Doris Kearns Goodwin worked in the White House in the late 60’s, and when Johnson asked her to help him write his memoirs, she declined because she also was against the war. However, Johnson was a master of persuasion, and she finally agreed. The memoir never got written, but Goodwin had unprecedented access to Johnson because of it and eventually used her notes to write this biography.

Goodwin is obviously interested in the pursuit and use of power, and Johnson is a perfect subject for that interest. She depicts a man who did not pursue power for itself but for the good he could do with it. I failed to mark them in the text, but many of his comments about the presidency and the use of power contrast starkly with the thinking of our last regime, which was fizzling out as I read this book.

Goodwin paints a picture of a complex man, brilliant but at times crude, organized, manipulative, a consummate negotiator, but a man with good intentions. It’s a pity that the war overshadowed and overwhelmed the other accomplishments of his presidency. Because of it, we forget that he put into process programs to help the needy and people of color. Medicare and the Voting Rights Act are down to him as well as other programs that were not handled as well because of his preoccupation with the war or that were gutted by Richard Nixon.

I did get a little bogged down in the chapter about the war, and it being a different time, today’s readers may have problems with how Johnson and others refer to minority groups. Still, I found this book really insightful and interesting, as it explores the reasons for some of his controversial decisions.

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Day 1017: The Midnight Assassin: Panic, Scandal, and the Hunt for America’s First Serial Killer

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Cover for Midnight AssassinI lived in Austin, Texas, for more than 20 years (not anymore, yay!), so I already know that Austin had a serial killer before Jack the Ripper. That didn’t make this book any less interesting, though.

Journalist Skip Hollandsworth was very surprised when he learned about it. In fact, he says he didn’t at first believe that, starting in 1884, Austin suffered a series of brutal attacks on women that ultimately culminated in several murders.

At that time, serving women usually lived in little shacks at the backs of their employers’ homes. Most of the victims were dragged out of these homes—other occupants either hit over the head or merely threatened—and then brutally attacked somewhere nearby. Most of the first victims were black, so of course (it being Texas and the 19th century), the authorities looked to African-American men for the perpetrator. Then they decided it was a gang of them. The idea of a serial killer seemed inconceivable to them.

Hollandsworth’s strength in this book is in bringing 1880’s Austin to life. He does a great job of setting the stage. I also enjoyed all of the photos of Austin from that time. This is an interesting story, one that many Austinites are unaware of. Of course, it doesn’t have a solution as the killer was never caught. We may never know who this murderer was or why he stopped. Hollandsworth follows up some interesting leads, though.

If you are interested in this topic, Steven Saylor has written a fictional account of it, using O. Henry as a character. His solution is a bit far-fetched and easy to predict, though.

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Day 995: The Promise

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Cover for The PromiseSeveral years ago, I read Erik Larson’s Isaac’s Storm, a nonfiction account of the terrible Galveston hurricane and flood of 1900. So, when one of the books on my Walter Scott Prize list turned out to be set in that time and place, I really wanted to read it. It did not disappoint.

Catherine Wainwright has behaved badly, and the result is a scandal that has resulted in her ostracism from her home town of Dayton, Ohio, and cost her livelihood as a performing pianist. In desperation, she writes to an old friend, Oscar Williams, who is a dairy farmer on Galveston Island. Although she has always considered herself his social superior, years ago he proposed to her. She did not accept him, but he is now a widower with a young son. He proposes again and she accepts. She has barely enough money to get to Galveston.

Nan Ogden is a much less sophisticated woman. She was the best friend of Bernadette, Oscar’s wife, and promised her she would take care of Andre, Oscar and Bernadette’s son. Truth be told, she has her own feelings for Oscar. Until Catherine appears, she has hopes that some day she might be Oscar’s wife. Instead, she finds herself a housekeeper for a woman who can barely boil an egg.

We don’t like Catherine at first, but she quickly grows on us as she develops more empathy for other people. As Catherine, Oscar, Andre, and Nan try to sort out their various feelings and relationships, the tension in the novel builds toward the storm. Then the novel becomes truly riveting.

The Promise is especially strong in its sense of place. I’ve been to Galveston when it was so hot I wondered how anyone could live there before air conditioning, let alone wearing corsets and tight clothes. Weisgarber really makes you feel the heat and stickiness.

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Day 916: The Unraveling of Mercy Louis

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Cover for The Unraveling of Mercy LouisAt the beginning of this novel, it is 1999 and the last day of Mercy Louis’s sophomore year in high school. The novel is set in the downtrodden refinery city of Port Sabine, Texas. Mercy lives with Maw Maw, her grandmother, a woman who combines a background of Cajun superstition with strict fundamentalism. Maw Maw has visions and believes that the End of Days will arrive at the end of the year.

Mercy is focused on the thing she finds most important—basketball. She follows her coach’s rigid routines and diet, and she doesn’t drink or get involved with boys. Her best friend and teammate Annie isn’t so careful, though, about parties or boys.

Troubles for the town begin when an employee of a convenience store finds the body of a fetus in the dumpster. National attention falls on the town, fundamentalists demonstrate against the evils of baby killing, and attention soon turns on the town’s teenage girls. As one of them remarks, it’s as if suddenly it’s a sin to be a girl.

Mercy feels pressure from other sources, too. She has had a fit or a vision at church. She has received a letter from her mother, who left her when she was a baby. She also has a boyfriend for the first time, Travis, a boy from an artistic, liberal background. And she’s started having trouble controlling one of her arms.

The other major character is Illa Stark, a misfit girl who has only one friend, Lennox, who works with her on the school paper. She has a crush on Lennox, but he is dating the formidable Annie. Illa also has a fascination with Mercy, the star of the girls’ basketball team.

Illa’s mother is wheelchair bound after a huge refinery accident several years ago. Now she hardly ever goes out. Illa doesn’t get out much either except as manager of the basketball team and in pursuit of her interest in photography.

Although this novel is a coming of age story, it is more about the pressures of religious fundamentalism on girls. Mercy tries to cope with the natural desires of teenage years to date and have fun, both of which she has been brought up to believe are evil.

I did care about these characters, but I felt that in some ways, although the novel doesn’t tie up all the threads, it comes to some easy solutions of the characters’ problems. I also found the writing—which is overloaded with similes and metaphors—to be irritating at times. So, I had a mixed reaction to this novel.

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