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...

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase It was dusk – winter dusk. Snow lay white and shining over the pleated hills, and icicles hung from the...

Third grade was a good year. My teacher was Mrs. Butte, a forty-ish woman with dyed red hair. She was mild-mannered, never raised her...

The Bear That Wasn’t by Frank Tashlin Once upon a time, in fact it was on a Tuesday, the Bear stood at the edge of a great forest and...

In the summer of 1918, the Great War in Europe was finally grinding to a dismal end. But unknown to people around the world, a new and...

After graduation from Penn State, Edwin and Elizabeth were married in July, 1913, at a church in Philadelphia. Neither of their families...

Edwin was a singer and at Penn State, he was a member of the Glee Club most years, besides performing with a quartet. He was the second...

Edwin was Grandmother’s husband, Uncle David’s and my mother’s father. I only knew him in those ways, never as Granddad. In 1918, he was...

When relatives and friends lived far away and long distance phone calls were too expensive for everyday chats, people wrote long, newsy...