<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews<\/span> and Foreword Reviews, <\/span>writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine,<\/span> and The Collagist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/span>11.12.2017<\/h1>\n

LITERARY FICTION<\/p>\n

James Ward Lee<\/span><\/p>\n

The Girls of the Golden West: A Novel<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Texas Christian University Press<\/p>\n

Paperback, 978-0-8756-5677-9 (also available as an e-book and in hardcover), 224 pgs., $22.95<\/p>\n

September 11, 2017<\/p>\n

Ninety-five-year-old John Quincy Adams the Second<\/span> (no relation) is contentedly living his \u201cplatinum years\u201d in fictional Bodark Springs, Texas. Wealthy due to inheritance, and rich due to a long career teaching English and history, John Q. opens his door one evening in 1971 to doctoral student Annie Baxter on his doorstep. Armed with a grant from the Texas State Historical Association and the Texas Folklore Society, Baxter wants to interview John Q. for an oral history of Northeast Texas. John Q., startled by Annie\u2019s resemblance to Elizabeth Denney, his lost love of forty years ago, reluctantly agrees to participate in the project, with one proviso: Baxter must content herself with John Q.\u2019s tales of others; his personal history is off limits.<\/p>\n

Edward, a lawyer and John Q.\u2019s oldest son, knows his father has secrets. John Q. did spend two years in California soon after the murder of his father and uncle. But Edward doesn\u2019t know the facts and, suspicious of Baxter\u2019s sudden appearance (\u201csecret agent or a blackmailer or maybe a hit woman\u201d), is concerned his elderly father, reminded of the love of his life, will introduce the skeletons in his closets to the fetching Annie. When anonymous notes and phone calls arrive, obliquely referencing his secrets, John Q. worries he may be called to account for a blood feud that may not be over.<\/p>\n

Preeminent Texas folklorist James Ward Lee,<\/span> founding director of the University of North Texas Press and Center for Texas Studies at UNT, member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, is the author of more than one hundred articles and the author or editor of eleven books. Now, at age eighty-five, Lee has published his debut novel, The Girls of the Golden West.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lee\u2019s characters are well developed and intriguing. The population of Bodark Springs is portrayed sympathetically and appreciatively. John Q.\u2019s charming first-person narration is funny and wise and vulnerable. He often quotes song lyrics, prose, and poetry, indulging in clever wordplay and inventing a new collective noun: a \u201cdisturbance of women.\u201d You know, like a pod of whales or a pride of lions.<\/p>\n

The Girls of the Golden West<\/span> moves at a steady, genteel pace. I was sometimes impatient with the pacing and the preoccupation with wardrobe and dinner menus, but Lee\u2019s plot twists held my attention. Lee scatters clues, skillfully foreshadowing the mystery of John Q.\u2019s missing years. The dialects he employs beg to be read aloud, and his dialogue is smart and funny. John Q. complains to one of his sons that he only wants them \u201cto let me alone to rust unburnished.\u201d A housekeeper confuses her words, resulting in this hilarity: \u201cDo you reckon there was some fortification going on? I always thought that old man was too old to fortify.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using the oral-history project premise, Lee deploys an entertaining technique for liberally seeding The Girls of the Golden West<\/span> with rich details of weddings, funerals, entertainments, religion, remedies, art, and politics from his encyclopedic knowledge gathered during a storied career as a folklorist. The resolution of John Q.\u2019s story is sweetly satisfying.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Newby is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews and Foreword Reviews, writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}