Part Twelve, A Town Named for a Coin When I was a freshman at Sam Houston State University, my then-boyfriend and I often left out on a...

Part 11, Fifty Tons of Granite Four miles north of Fredericksburg, Texas, there is a place called Bear Mountain. In reality, it’s not so...

Part 10, Contigo Ranch and Crabapple Memorial Day Weekend --- Road trip south with my son Zach to attend a family wedding. It was to be...

Part 9, Charles and His Much-Loved Invention Travel south from Dallas on Interstate 35 and in about 90 minutes, depending on traffic,...

Part 8, The Muncey Massacre, Installment 2 Wooded area on the east side of Rowlett Creek, part of Oak Point Park and Nature Preserve It...

Part 8, The Muncey Massacre -- Installment 1 Raiding to gain those fine, Kentucky horses. . . In the fall of 1844, Jeremiah Muncey, his...

Part 7, The Camels of Camp Verde This story begins with an action taken by Jefferson Davis. A few years before he became President of the...

Part 6, German Pioneer Christmas Restored Doeppenschmidt-Haas house, east of Fredericksburg, TX, a fine example of the early settlers...

Part 5: Sophia, More Fiction Than Fact? Texas has its share of colorful male characters, but it doesn’t lack in numbers of vivid women,...

Part 4: A Genuine Ghost Town -- In More Ways Than One In the early years of the Texas republic, people of strong character trekked from...

A State Historic Site Last week, a friend and I made the short field trip to Denison, a small city located about 75 miles north of...

The No. 1 British Flying Training School The small town of Terrell is located on the prairie, 32 miles east of Dallas. It came into being...

Part 1 Texas is one huge state, second only to Alaska. It boasts 254 counties and 268, 597 square miles. Indigenous peoples lived here...

When I’m researching for a new novel, some of the best places to get information are newspapers from the targeted era, especially the...

Students at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1882. The man in the center is identified as American Horse with his daughter Maggie...

Brighty of the Grand Canyon by Marguerite Henry A shaggy young burro lay asleep in the gray dust of the canyon trail. Except for the slow...

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the...

Texas by James Michener At three-thirty in the cold morning of Sunday, 6 March, Galba Fuqua reached over and nudged his friend Zave...

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë . . . I started awake on hearing a vague murmur, peculiar and lugubrious, which sounded, I thought, just...

A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote I was first introduced to this story in the fall of 1966. It was in the form of a one-hour tv movie...