In Stephen King’s The Stand, the ultimate battle between good and evil happens between the western US cities of Boulder, Colorado, and Las Vegas, Nevada.
The good guys are in beautiful Boulder, surrounded by mountains and streams, Rocky Mountain National Park and the University of Boulder. The bad guys are in Las Vegas, home of lights […]

One of my favorite books took place in New Mexico — Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya. Ultima is an old wise woman, a curandera, with magical secrets and an owl for a familiar.
One of the things that intrigues me about this book is the juxtaposition of Catholicism and the old beliefs that remain an […]

They call New Mexico the Land of Enchantment, and I don’t think it’s all about the peyote, either. If you want to fall in love with New Mexico, just visit. If you can’t go there, pick up a copy of the movie Off the Map, and you’ll get a small taste of the beauty.
Off the […]

When I was sixteen, I took a road trip with my family from Galveston, Texas, to Colorado Springs, Colo., up to Jackson Hole, Wyo., and back down to Texas. Despite the usual teenage complaints about driving around with my parents, it was a beautiful trip, filled with waterfalls and caverns, mountains and splendor.
The landscape flattened […]

So I must admit I’ve never read, James Michener’s Texas, but I did wear a big old Texas belt buckle in his honor for Halloween in 1997, the year he died.
Okay, some may think it’s morbid, but my annual Halloween costume is traditionally some sort of tribute to a famous person that died in the […]

Larry McMurtry’s book with Danny Deck may be the only novel I’ve read that took place in Texas, but it’s not the only book. The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr is a memoir vivid with life in Port Arthur, Texas, maybe 100 miles from where I grew up. It also happens to be the same […]

Don’t get me wrong. I loved my junialeeg grandmother. She was generous and intelligent, and she never forgot a birthday. Both her penmanship and her grammar were impeccable.
Mary lived in New Orleans long enough to send her son through a preppy high school and marry him off to the girl next door, before she moved […]

For a short time in my early twenties, I tried to free myself of the “y’all” — that tell-tale southernism — much as one would try to stop cursing or spitting. I’m not sure why. Perhaps I thought it made me sound backward. Perhaps it was a source of shame. Alas, I was young and […]

Honestly, I think I’ve only read one novel that takes place in Texas. I guess since I live here, I usually find myself leaving the state instead of losing myself in it so completely.
The one novel was Some Can Whistle by Larry McMurtry. I must admit it’s rather endearing to read places that are so […]

My grandmother Nola was a total Ya-Ya when she was younger. When I read Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, I could see her right there on the page, drinking Dixie beer and dirty martinis, laughing and playing Boure (Boo-Ray). I could hear her talking to me with Vivi’s words.
She was kind-hearted and fun, toxic […]