Texas Reading

  Tumbleweeds by Leila Meacham  (Adult fiction)
                               Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group, June, 2012

     Sometimes you find an author who connects with her territory and none is better at nailing the quirky Texas accents and regionalisms of speech than Leila Meacham. I have never met the retired San Antonio teacher, but look forward to more of her writing.

     In her first novel, Roses, the author takes on a fictitious East Texas area that has to be the Tyler rose area. The book was a long, winding story of friendship, love, and families. Its debut heralded a "Texas Gone with the Wind".

     But, in Tumbleweeds, Ms. Meacham is really beginning to strut her stuff! Set in the Texas Panhandle, Tumbleweeds takes on Texas football itself. This story of three friends has a tighter plotting than Roses, and fewer meandering paths to explore. Rather than stopping to smell the roses, the reader is swept up in the direct path of a tumbleweed in a windstorm! The regionalisms of speech are spot-on with such comparisons as a car "going a mite fast" and a woman's pale face to Sheetrock. Native Texans will hear themselves in this book. The complications are tied up rather quickly in the very last chapters, but they are all resolved.

     Need a vacation book? Pack this one!