After three long months at sea, Helga Heinrich and her four children sail into the thriving Indianola seaport on the Texas coast in 1853 to begin their new life. They are determined to overcome the memory and haunting legacy of Max, her husband and their papa, who drowned in a drunken leap from the dock as their ship pulled away from the German port. Helga is anxious to be reunited with her sister Amelia, and she’s grateful her wealthy brother-in-law, Dr. Joseph Stein, fulfills his part of the bargain that brought the family to the new world, even without Max to run Stein Mercantile. Helga takes charge of Stein’s massive boarding house overlooking the road to Texas’ interior and the fickle waves of Matagorda Bay. A woman of strong passions, Helga operates Stein House for boarders of all stripes whose involvement in the rigors of a town on the edge of frontier influences and molds all their lives—the cruelties of yellow fever and slavery, the wrenching choices of Civil War and Reconstruction, murder, alcoholism, and the devastation wrought by the hurricane of 1886.
These tales trace the Texas story, from Cabeza de Vaca who trekked barefoot across the country recording the first accounts of Indian life, to impresarios like Stephen F. Austin and Don Martín DeLeón who brought settlers into Mexican Texas. There are visionaries like Padre José Nicolás Ballí, the Singer family, and Sam Robertson, who tried and failed to develop Padre Island into the wonderland that it is today. There are legendary characters like Sally Skull who had five husbands and may have killed some of them, and Josiah Wilbarger who was scalped and lived another ten years to tell about it. Also included are the stories of Shanghai Pierce, cattleman extraordinaire, who had no qualms about rounding up other folks’ calves, and Tol Barret who drilled Texas’ first oil well over thirty years before Spindletop changed the world. The Sanctified Sisters got rich running a commune for women, and millionaire oilman Edgar B. Davis gave away his money as fast as he made it. Sam Houston, Jean Lafitte, Antonio López de Santa Anna, Lucy Kidd-Key, Minnie Fisher Cunningham, all these characters and many more—early-day adventurers, Civil War heroes, and latter-day artists and musicians—created the patchwork called Texas.
In 1945 the war is crashing to its end, and in a tiny Texas town Miranda Harrison, age twelve, struggles to make sense of her changing body and the turmoil in her life-a papa driven to destroy himself, a mama hiding her secret past in a cloak of piety, and a live-in grandmother reigning over the household. Stirred into the family mix is a fifteen-year-old, out-of-control cousin holding the adults and Miranda in guilty submission.
This book contains lively historical narrative deftly woven into area descriptions, directions, information for the traveler. It is both entertaining and educational.
After three long months at sea, Helga Heinrich and her four children sail into the thriving Indianola seaport on the Texas coast in 1853 to begin their new life. They are determined to overcome the memory and haunting legacy of Max, her husband and their papa, who drowned in a drunken leap from the dock as their ship pulled away from the German port. Helga is anxious to be reunited with her sister Amelia, and she’s grateful her wealthy brother-in-law, Dr. Joseph Stein, fulfills his part of the bargain that brought the family to the new world, even without Max to run Stein Mercantile. Helga takes charge of Stein’s massive boarding house overlooking the road to Texas’ interior and the fickle waves of Matagorda Bay. A woman of strong passions, Helga operates Stein House for boarders of all stripes whose involvement in the rigors of a town on the edge of frontier influences and molds all their lives—the cruelties of yellow fever and slavery, the wrenching choices of Civil War and Reconstruction, murder, alcoholism, and the devastation wrought by the hurricane of 1886.
These tales trace the Texas story, from Cabeza de Vaca who trekked barefoot across the country recording the first accounts of Indian life, to impresarios like Stephen F. Austin and Don Martín DeLeón who brought settlers into Mexican Texas. There are visionaries like Padre José Nicolás Ballí, the Singer family, and Sam Robertson, who tried and failed to develop Padre Island into the wonderland that it is today. There are legendary characters like Sally Skull who had five husbands and may have killed some of them, and Josiah Wilbarger who was scalped and lived another ten years to tell about it. Also included are the stories of Shanghai Pierce, cattleman extraordinaire, who had no qualms about rounding up other folks’ calves, and Tol Barret who drilled Texas’ first oil well over thirty years before Spindletop changed the world. The Sanctified Sisters got rich running a commune for women, and millionaire oilman Edgar B. Davis gave away his money as fast as he made it. Sam Houston, Jean Lafitte, Antonio López de Santa Anna, Lucy Kidd-Key, Minnie Fisher Cunningham, all these characters and many more—early-day adventurers, Civil War heroes, and latter-day artists and musicians—created the patchwork called Texas.
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