Contributing Editor<\/span><\/h1>\n![](\"https:\/\/lonestarliterary.etypegoogle10.com\/sites\/lonestarliterary.etypegoogle10.com\/files\/description\/dottedline220.jpg\")
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<\/span><\/span>POETRY<\/p>\nCarmen Tafolla, edited by Bryce Milligan<\/span><\/p>\nNew and Selected Poems<\/span><\/p>\nHardcover, 978-0-87565-689-2, 96 pp.,\u00a0 $19.95<\/p>\n
Texas A&M University Press<\/p>\n
TCU Texas Poets Laureate Series<\/p>\n
June 15, 2018<\/p>\n
Reviewed by Natalia Trevi\u00f1o<\/p>\n
The first burst of delicacies in Carmen Tafolla\u2019s<\/span> New and Selected Poems.<\/span> A tribute to her accomplishments, roots, and activism by Bryce Milligan.<\/span> The sweets that waterfall out? Eclectic, sensuous, and unabashed poetics of a fierce Chicana.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As I read this collection, I was reminded how fortunate I am to live in the city whose praises she frequently sings and whose sorrows and injustices she laments. This is one of the bright pi\u00f1atas in this book for San Antonio readers, but the big prize goes to a much wider population. Needed in a time filled with such negative rhetoric about immigrants and Mexicans, this book feeds its readers pride in their cultura,<\/span> in its Indigenous wisdom from the voice of a nurturer-mother Earth: \u201cI have squeezed cilantro into the breast milk\/ made sure you were nurtured with the taste \/ of green life.”<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cSassy as salsa,\u201d this books teaches that we can \u201csashay\u201d as we \u201csizzle on the streets,\u201d offering an alternative to the narrative of despair and inferiority that is often sold to the world about Indigenous peoples, Mexicans, and Mexican-Americans. >>READ MORE<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/lonestarliterary.etypegoogle10.com\/sites\/lonestarliterary.etypegoogle10.com\/files\/description\/kurson%2c%20rocket%20men_cover%20ts.jpg\")
<\/span><\/span>SCIENCE AND HISTORY<\/p>\nRobert Kurson<\/span><\/p>\nRocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man\u2019s First Journey to the Moon<\/span><\/p>\nRandom House<\/p>\n
Hardcover, 978-0812988703, 384 pages, $28.00; April 3, 2018<\/p>\n
Reviewed by Chris Manno<\/p>\n
If you could pick only one book to read that would place you at the epicenter of the daring Apollo moon landing program,<\/span> the Cold War and the legendary Space Race, this would be it.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man\u2019s First Journey to the Moon,<\/span> Kurson has achieved a fascinating and readable blend of both the history and context that comprised the world stage upon which man\u2019s greatest journey played out in the latter years of the 1960s.\u00a0 >>READ MORE<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/lonestarliterary.etypegoogle10.com\/sites\/lonestarliterary.etypegoogle10.com\/files\/description\/holmes%2c%20searching%20for%20pilar_cover%20ts.jpg\")
<\/span><\/span>FICTION<\/p>\nPatricia Hunt Holmes<\/span><\/p>\nSearching for Pilar<\/span><\/p>\nRiver Grove Books<\/p>\n
Paperback, 978-1-63299-153-9 (also available as ebook); 320 pages, $16.95; April 10, 2018<\/p>\n
In stark, disturbing detail, <\/span>Searching for Pilar <\/span>confronts the grim crime of sex trafficking in Mexico and the United States and shows how difficult it can be for law-enforcement authorities to take actions to stop it.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This first novel by Houston writer Patricia Hunt Holmes<\/span> is \u201cinspired by real events and informed by experts.\u201d It takes the reader into the darkest heart of an inhumane underworld business.\u00a0 >>READ MORE<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/lonestarliterary.etypegoogle10.com\/sites\/lonestarliterary.etypegoogle10.com\/files\/description\/dromgoole%2c%20glenn_headshot2b.jpg\")
<\/span><\/span><\/span>Texas Reads<\/span>Glenn Dromgoole<\/span><\/h1>\n>> archive<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\nLatest Hank the Cowdog novel inspired by 2017 wildfire<\/h1>\n
<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/lonestarliterary.etypegoogle10.com\/sites\/lonestarliterary.etypegoogle10.com\/files\/description\/erickson%2c%20the%20case%20of%20the%20monster%20fire_cover%20sm.jpg\")
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The 71st novel in the popular Hank the Cowdog series is The Case of the Monster Fire<\/span> (Maverick Books, $5.99 paperback).<\/p>\nThe story grew out of the March 2017 wildfire that burned more than a million acres in the Texas Panhandle, including the working ranch of John R. Erickson,<\/span> author of the Hank series.<\/p>\nIn The Case of the Monster Fire,<\/span> Hank and ranch hand Slim Chance come face to face with a wildfire unlike anything they\u2019ve seen before. Slim has just invested in his own herd of cattle; will he be able to save them?<\/p>\nAt the end of the story, John and Kris Erickson give a brief report on \u201cthe real fire\u201d that destroyed their home and ranch and Erickson\u2019s workshop. In the aftermath of the fire, they said they received boxes of encouraging letters from friends they had never met.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re already embarking on the road to rebuilding,\u201d they tell readers. \u201cThank you, Hank readers and friends, for your letters, prayers, and help. You have been an incredible blessing to us!\u201d Erickson also has teamed up with the National Ranching Heritage Center at Texas Tech to produce a three-book non-fiction series for young readers about real life on a ranch.<\/p>\n
The first book, published in the fall of 2016, focused on Ranching and Livestock,<\/span> while the second, published last fall, dealt with Cowboys and Horses.<\/span> The third book, Ranch Wildlife,<\/span> is scheduled for this fall.<\/p>\nThe books are written in the voice of Hank the Cowdog himself, who explains ranch life in easy-to-understand language. Although the series is intended for children, adults who have never lived on a ranch can learn something from the books as well.<\/p>\n
Perryton artist Gerald L. Holmes,<\/span> who has illustrated all the Hank stories, also provided the artwork for the non-fiction Ranch Life series.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/lonestarliterary.etypegoogle10.com\/sites\/lonestarliterary.etypegoogle10.com\/files\/description\/milligan%2c%20literary%20san%20antonio_cover%20sm105x156.jpg\")
<\/span><\/span><\/span>San Antonio writers:<\/span> When Carlton Stowers<\/span> and I put together our selection of 101 Essential Texas Books<\/span> in 2014, one of our choices was the \u201cLiterary Cities\u201d series from TCU Press. At the time it consisted of five volumes, Literary Fort Worth<\/span> being the first, followed by Literary Austin<\/span> then Dallas, El Paso and Houston.<\/p>\nWhat was missing was Literary San Antonio.<\/span> Well, no longer. TCU Press has published the San Antonio volume this spring (a handsome $34.95 hardcover), and it\u2019s well worth the wait.<\/p>\nEdited by Bryce Milligan,<\/span> Literary San Antonio<\/span> includes a wide range of writers and their stories, essays or poems, grouped under five section headings \u2014 historical writing, journalism and political essays, poetry and prose poems, drama, and fiction.<\/p>\nA few of the prominent authors represented: Maury Maverick Sr., Jan Jarboe Russell, Carmen Tafolla, Laurie Ann Guerrero, Naomi Shihab Nye, O. Henry, Stephen Harrigan, Nan Cuba, Rick Riordan, Sandra Cisneros.<\/span><\/p>\nMilligan introduces the collection with an essay on \u201cThree Centuries of Writing in and of San Antonio,\u201d summarizing San Antonio\u2019s rich literary tradition.<\/p>\n
Glenn Dromgoole<\/span> writes about Texas books and authors. Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n>> <\/span>Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Lit<\/a><\/span>erary Life<\/span><\/h1>\n* * * * *<\/p>\n
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<\/span><\/span>2018 TEXAS BOOKISH DESTINATIONS<\/h1>\nCan you name this literary place in the Lone Star State?<\/h1>\n
Okay, one last chance at the prize, before National Poetry Month comes to an end April 30!<\/span><\/p>\nAdmit it: bookfans love traveling almost as much as they love reading itself.<\/span> Beginning March 4, 2018, Lone Star Literary Life will roll out #10 through #6 in our annual list of Top Texas Bookish Destinations, for readers who want to visit the settings of their favorite books, the birthplaces and haunts of favorite authors, and hot spots for book buying, readings, and other literary activity.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But throughout Texas\u2019s 268,597 square miles, there are also lots of out-of-the-way points of interest that we don\u2019t always have space to cover in our Top Ten pages.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Watch this space each week for a new bookish place that you\u2019ll want to add to your own travel list. Be the first to email us with the correct identification, and win a prize!<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This week, we continue with a bookish place that\u2019s located in 2017\u2019s #2 Top Bookish Destination. There\u2019s plenty of poetry in this literary-rich city, but there\u2019s a Poet Tree, too. Can you name the city? And extra credit for telling our readers the neighborhood or street where they can find it, too.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nCarmen Tafolla, edited by Bryce Milligan<\/span><\/p>\n New and Selected Poems<\/span><\/p>\n Hardcover, 978-0-87565-689-2, 96 pp.,\u00a0 $19.95<\/p>\n Texas A&M University Press<\/p>\n TCU Texas Poets Laureate Series<\/p>\n June 15, 2018<\/p>\n Reviewed by Natalia Trevi\u00f1o<\/p>\n The first burst of delicacies in Carmen Tafolla\u2019s<\/span> New and Selected Poems.<\/span> A tribute to her accomplishments, roots, and activism by Bryce Milligan.<\/span> The sweets that waterfall out? Eclectic, sensuous, and unabashed poetics of a fierce Chicana.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As I read this collection, I was reminded how fortunate I am to live in the city whose praises she frequently sings and whose sorrows and injustices she laments. This is one of the bright pi\u00f1atas in this book for San Antonio readers, but the big prize goes to a much wider population. Needed in a time filled with such negative rhetoric about immigrants and Mexicans, this book feeds its readers pride in their cultura,<\/span> in its Indigenous wisdom from the voice of a nurturer-mother Earth: \u201cI have squeezed cilantro into the breast milk\/ made sure you were nurtured with the taste \/ of green life.”<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cSassy as salsa,\u201d this books teaches that we can \u201csashay\u201d as we \u201csizzle on the streets,\u201d offering an alternative to the narrative of despair and inferiority that is often sold to the world about Indigenous peoples, Mexicans, and Mexican-Americans. >>READ MORE<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Robert Kurson<\/span><\/p>\n Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man\u2019s First Journey to the Moon<\/span><\/p>\n Random House<\/p>\n Hardcover, 978-0812988703, 384 pages, $28.00; April 3, 2018<\/p>\n Reviewed by Chris Manno<\/p>\n If you could pick only one book to read that would place you at the epicenter of the daring Apollo moon landing program,<\/span> the Cold War and the legendary Space Race, this would be it.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man\u2019s First Journey to the Moon,<\/span> Kurson has achieved a fascinating and readable blend of both the history and context that comprised the world stage upon which man\u2019s greatest journey played out in the latter years of the 1960s.\u00a0 >>READ MORE<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Patricia Hunt Holmes<\/span><\/p>\n Searching for Pilar<\/span><\/p>\n River Grove Books<\/p>\n Paperback, 978-1-63299-153-9 (also available as ebook); 320 pages, $16.95; April 10, 2018<\/p>\n In stark, disturbing detail, <\/span>Searching for Pilar <\/span>confronts the grim crime of sex trafficking in Mexico and the United States and shows how difficult it can be for law-enforcement authorities to take actions to stop it.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This first novel by Houston writer Patricia Hunt Holmes<\/span> is \u201cinspired by real events and informed by experts.\u201d It takes the reader into the darkest heart of an inhumane underworld business.\u00a0 >>READ MORE<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The 71st novel in the popular Hank the Cowdog series is The Case of the Monster Fire<\/span> (Maverick Books, $5.99 paperback).<\/p>\n The story grew out of the March 2017 wildfire that burned more than a million acres in the Texas Panhandle, including the working ranch of John R. Erickson,<\/span> author of the Hank series.<\/p>\n In The Case of the Monster Fire,<\/span> Hank and ranch hand Slim Chance come face to face with a wildfire unlike anything they\u2019ve seen before. Slim has just invested in his own herd of cattle; will he be able to save them?<\/p>\n At the end of the story, John and Kris Erickson give a brief report on \u201cthe real fire\u201d that destroyed their home and ranch and Erickson\u2019s workshop. In the aftermath of the fire, they said they received boxes of encouraging letters from friends they had never met.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re already embarking on the road to rebuilding,\u201d they tell readers. \u201cThank you, Hank readers and friends, for your letters, prayers, and help. You have been an incredible blessing to us!\u201d Erickson also has teamed up with the National Ranching Heritage Center at Texas Tech to produce a three-book non-fiction series for young readers about real life on a ranch.<\/p>\n The first book, published in the fall of 2016, focused on Ranching and Livestock,<\/span> while the second, published last fall, dealt with Cowboys and Horses.<\/span> The third book, Ranch Wildlife,<\/span> is scheduled for this fall.<\/p>\n The books are written in the voice of Hank the Cowdog himself, who explains ranch life in easy-to-understand language. Although the series is intended for children, adults who have never lived on a ranch can learn something from the books as well.<\/p>\n Perryton artist Gerald L. Holmes,<\/span> who has illustrated all the Hank stories, also provided the artwork for the non-fiction Ranch Life series.<\/p>\n What was missing was Literary San Antonio.<\/span> Well, no longer. TCU Press has published the San Antonio volume this spring (a handsome $34.95 hardcover), and it\u2019s well worth the wait.<\/p>\n Edited by Bryce Milligan,<\/span> Literary San Antonio<\/span> includes a wide range of writers and their stories, essays or poems, grouped under five section headings \u2014 historical writing, journalism and political essays, poetry and prose poems, drama, and fiction.<\/p>\n A few of the prominent authors represented: Maury Maverick Sr., Jan Jarboe Russell, Carmen Tafolla, Laurie Ann Guerrero, Naomi Shihab Nye, O. Henry, Stephen Harrigan, Nan Cuba, Rick Riordan, Sandra Cisneros.<\/span><\/p>\n Milligan introduces the collection with an essay on \u201cThree Centuries of Writing in and of San Antonio,\u201d summarizing San Antonio\u2019s rich literary tradition.<\/p>\n Glenn Dromgoole<\/span> writes about Texas books and authors. Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n Okay, one last chance at the prize, before National Poetry Month comes to an end April 30!<\/span><\/p>\n Admit it: bookfans love traveling almost as much as they love reading itself.<\/span> Beginning March 4, 2018, Lone Star Literary Life will roll out #10 through #6 in our annual list of Top Texas Bookish Destinations, for readers who want to visit the settings of their favorite books, the birthplaces and haunts of favorite authors, and hot spots for book buying, readings, and other literary activity.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But throughout Texas\u2019s 268,597 square miles, there are also lots of out-of-the-way points of interest that we don\u2019t always have space to cover in our Top Ten pages.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Watch this space each week for a new bookish place that you\u2019ll want to add to your own travel list. Be the first to email us with the correct identification, and win a prize!<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This week, we continue with a bookish place that\u2019s located in 2017\u2019s #2 Top Bookish Destination. There\u2019s plenty of poetry in this literary-rich city, but there\u2019s a Poet Tree, too. Can you name the city? And extra credit for telling our readers the neighborhood or street where they can find it, too.<\/p>\n<\/span><\/span>POETRY<\/p>\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/span><\/span>SCIENCE AND HISTORY<\/p>\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/span><\/span>FICTION<\/p>\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Texas Reads<\/span>Glenn Dromgoole<\/span><\/h1>\n>> archive<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
Latest Hank the Cowdog novel inspired by 2017 wildfire<\/h1>\n
<\/div>\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>San Antonio writers:<\/span> When Carlton Stowers<\/span> and I put together our selection of 101 Essential Texas Books<\/span> in 2014, one of our choices was the \u201cLiterary Cities\u201d series from TCU Press. At the time it consisted of five volumes, Literary Fort Worth<\/span> being the first, followed by Literary Austin<\/span> then Dallas, El Paso and Houston.<\/p>\n>> <\/span>Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Lit<\/a><\/span>erary Life<\/span><\/h1>\n
<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/span><\/span>2018 TEXAS BOOKISH DESTINATIONS<\/h1>\nCan you name this literary place in the Lone Star State?<\/h1>\n
![](\"https:\/\/lonestarliterary.etypegoogle10.com\/sites\/lonestarliterary.etypegoogle10.com\/files\/description\/bookish%20texas%20022518%20sm215x322.jpg\")
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