Anahuac: A Texas Story<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\nCanned Peas Productions<\/p>\n
Paperback, 978-19746-4540-4 (also available as ebook), 278 pages, $14.99<\/p>\n
October 2, 2017<\/p>\n
Austin writer William D. Darling\u2019s second novel,<\/span> Anahuac,<\/span> is an entertaining, engrossing legal thriller that offers both darkly humorous and good-natured thrusts at life, love, and law in early 1970s Texas. Some brief bits of Gulf Coast Texana also help set the scenes.<\/p>\nA young lawyer takes on a case that snowballs into a death-penalty murder trial in Chambers County, just after he has gone into private law practice in La Porte with his barely reliable best friend and the best friend\u2019s stunning wife.<\/p>\n
Anahuac\u2019s<\/span> protagonist, Jim Ward, previously appeared as a young, green Houston assistant district attorney in Darling\u2019s 2016 first novel, Morgan\u2019s Point. In Anahuac,<\/span> Ward has grown up a little bit\u2014he\u2019s now 30 years old, living in a big, hurricane-impervious house, and enjoying (or at least tolerating) many of wealth\u2019s comforts. He\u2019s married to Cooper Faircloth, daughter of Taylor Faircloth. \u201cOil man, publisher, and political king-maker were but a few of his titles,\u201d Darling writes.<\/p>\nReaders who haven\u2019t seen the 1967 hit movie The Graduate<\/span> might want to check it out while reading this well-written novel. In Anahuac,<\/span> Jim Ward remains inspired by memories of Dustin Hoffman driving a red Alfa Romeo sports-car convertible at high speeds once he decides to go after the woman he loves and seek the meaning of life. Ward\u2019s wife, Cooper, however, is much more practical. \u201cI\u2019m not having you drive down Interstate 10 at seventy miles an hour in a paper sack,\u201d she tells him. She insists he drive a much heavier, more lawyerly Lincoln Continental, a choice that does improve his survival chances in sudden, windy Gulf Coast storms that dump blinding rain.<\/p>\nMeanwhile, Ward\u2019s new client, the Rev. Randall Clay, a money-grabbing Arkansas radio evangelist, seems unconcerned about being arrested and charged with murdering one of his listeners. Shortly before her violent death, an aging Anahuac widow with money and nearly 13,000 acres of ranch pledged her estate to Clay, cutting out her \u201cslug of a nephew.\u201d But the reverend also happened to be staying at the widow\u2019s ranch house at the time she was murdered.<\/p>\n
Clay tells Ward he\u2019s innocent but has decided to turn his fate over to God and a Texas jury, continuing his ministry inside prison, if necessary. Meanwhile, the case becomes national news, and many of Clay\u2019s listeners descend upon the small town of Anahuac.<\/p>\n
If that isn\u2019t enough for Jim Ward, he also has to deal with three strong women\u2014his wife, his best friend\u2019s wife, and Ward\u2019s former girlfriend, now a TV reporter. In the early 1970s, many men still think a woman\u2019s place is in the home. Jim Ward, fortunately, is learning better, the hard way.<\/p>\n
A few typos pop up; sharper proofreading would have helped. But William D. Darling\u2019s writing skills are solid. Anahuac<\/span> is first-rate reading, especially for readers who enjoy legal thrillers, lawyer procedurals, suspense, Texas settings, and characters who live large.<\/p>\n* * * * *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lone Star Book Reviews of Texas books appear weekly at LoneStarLiterary.com William D. Darling is a lifelong storyteller and very…<\/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-1025","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\/1025","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=1025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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