In an exclusive first look at his new book, journalist Joe Holley revisits the terrible morning when mayhem descended on a rural Texas church.
Articles by Joe Holley
Small-town Benefactors: A Gusher Begets Generations of Wealth
How ranching and oil families have kept Albany flourishing.
Small-town Benefactors: A Face-lift in the Desert
The philanthropic financier who restored a West Texas outpost.
Small-town Benefactors: The Merchant Prince of the Panhandle
High finance in the High Plains.
Dawn
In the June 1991 issue, in an article called “Voices From the Dark,” I told the story of Dawn, my mother-in-law. It was an account of her brief career as a singer in Hollywood in the late forties, how schizophrenia had brought that career to a tragic end, and how…
Unconventional
From Lee Otis Johnson’s arrest to Ben Barnes’s ascent, 1968 was a hell of a year in Texas.
Is Waco Wacko?
After the latest standoff there�by an armed UFO cultist�you might think so. But on the fifth anniversary of the Branch Davidian siege, the Central Texas community is doing just fine, thank you.
Weekly, Strongly
Why are small-town Texas newspapers thriving? Because unlike big-city dailies, they know their readers, and they give them what they want.
The Doctor Is In
For El Paso physician Abraham Verghese, writing about life and death in the age of AIDS is a prescription for literary success.
A Whitman Sampler
Thirty years later, the legacy of Charles Whitman’s shooting spree at the University of Texas still towers above us.
Tough Nuts to Crack
Marketing the Texas pecan like the California raisin seems to make good business sense. So why do small Texas growers think it’s a shell game?
Voices From The Dark
Before Dawn was caught in the terrifying grip of schizophrenia, she had been a talented jazz singer. Now her son-in-law tells her story of no place to go.
The Intellectuals’ Dear Abby
A new study of sociologist C. Wright Mills is adequate but uninspired; this year’s Texas Institute of Letters fiction prize has gone to a fine first novel.