In DANCING WITH LYNDON (TCU Press), San Antonio novelist DONLEY WATT treats us to 24 hours of Cottonwood in 1948, a place and time when white pharmacy customers could peruse postcards of bloody lynchings while shopping for health remedies. Attorney Thomas Patterson's political aspirations are shattered when his acquitted client (a black man) confesses to his crime (raping a white girl). That evening, Patterson's wife, emboldened by a bit of wine, decides that a few dances with barnstorming senatorial hopeful Lyndon Baines Johnson just might revive Patterson's fortunes. Watt delivers a perfectly ironic ending to a crisply paced novel that is ultimately about what happens when little fishes try to swim with big fishes. Reviewed by Mike Shea
With CRONIES (Public Affairs), Texas journalist ROBERT BRYCE explores the perception that the interests of big business and the ruling Republicans have become one and the same. Bryce catalogs Texas politicos' long history of cozying up with industry—Democrat LBJ steered contracts to his men at Brown and Root—but he says that the oil-business ties of the recent Bush administrations are far more troubling. Chronicling the escalation of billion-dollar global back-scratching between public officials and corporate powerhouses like Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, and Enron, he makes the case that the GOP's focus on oil and profit has created decades of international woes—including the current imbroglio in Iraq. The result is a scathing indictment that will not win him endorsements at whitehouse.gov. Reviewed by Mike Shea
Jesse Sublett
Never the Same Again (A Rock'n'Roll Gothic)
(Boaz/Ten Speed)
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On August 16, 1976, JESSE SUBLETT was a fledgling bass player riding high on the afterglow of his rock band's first San Antonio gig. Then he returned to his South Austin rent house and discovered his girlfriend, Dianne Roberts, murdered. In his memoir, NEVER THE SAME AGAIN (A ROCK 'N' ROLL GOTHIC) (Boaz/Ten Speed), Sublett examines his life through the dual prisms of survivor's guilt (could he have prevented Roberts's death?) and a survivor's ethic (he confronted his own mortality in a bout with stage IV throat cancer). Along the way he culls wry anecdotes from his eclectic résumé as not-quite-famous musician, hard-boiled mystery novelist, documentary screenwriter, and now-emotionally rehabilitated husband and father while leavening the raw sadness with honesty and optimism. Reviewed by Mike Shea
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