Many of the ballets, theatres, and symphonies of modern Texas can be traced to names recited in this chronicle. If you like Texas history, you will love Paul Spellman's most recent contribution to it. By 1903, the Beaumont boom was already waning and the frontier excitement had moved on to Sour Lake in the Big Thicket, where feral hogs came in from the dark woods coated in oil that seeped to the surface in swampy stretches of the forest. Spellman gives us Sour Lake, too. Jane Roberts Wood authored the fine epistolary novel The Train to Estelline , which told the tale of a young female schoolteacher from Bonham, Texas, and her journey to the arid, bald Texas panhandle.
Wood is back.
Her new novel, Grace , is set in a place in East Texas called Cold Springs. Wood's narrative is as compelling as a brilliantly executed history, the vivid details of wartime Texas rendered fresh, including rationing of sugar, delivery of war department telegrams, and aching separations from loved ones. Her characters are true to their place, especially Grace Gillian, the protagonist, who struggles with her failed marriage and her high school students who look to her for advice and comfort as the familiar rhythms of their lives are disrupted by global events. This novel is a great read by a fine Texas writer and teacher of writing. It also reveals a love story that is, at once, realistic and has a happy ending, qualities that are sometimes thought to be mutually exclusive.