Tales of Bob Lee and Arliss Lee: The Blurry Line Between Fiction and Truth

Those of you who read my novels (thank you) will recognize the name Bob Lee Boggs. There is a hint of him in the first two novels and much more about him in Rivers Ebb. Bob Lee waved once as he danced his way through the snow toward Jake and String. Jake’s cousin had always carried twenty or thirty extra pounds, but it was evenly distributed.

His character is even more important in *Go Down Looking, my fifth novel. “Damn, Jake. I babysat you for six months and you didn’t get thrown in jail once. Let you out of my sight for a little bit and here you are in the hoosegow.”

 I’ve never tried to hide the fact that the character named Bob Lee was inspired by my cousin, Arliss Lee Edwards. Arliss was one of those “bigger than life” characters who seemed more suited to fiction than real life. There are hundreds of stories about him.

He was eight years older than me, and lived five hundred miles away in the Texas Panhandle. The stories, however, traveled the distance back to my home in Northeast Texas regularly and Arliss became a sort of legend in my boyhood mind. He wasn’t a bad boy in the traditional sense; he just did things that inspired laughter and more than a little tongue-wagging.

We moved to the Panhandle when I was fourteen and the distance between Arliss and me was reduced from five hundred miles to about thirty miles. Our house was literally in the middle of nowhere (twenty miles away from a paved road) and you could not distinguish the front from the back.

You could see one small shack from our place if you knew where to look and the sand wasn’t blowing. It seemed to me that we had moved to the moon. The only people I knew out there were Arliss and his family.

Arliss sensed my fear and misery and would sometimes take me for a ride in his ’57 black Chevy. I will never forget the rooster tail of dust that Chevy left on the dirt road that led to our house, or watching Arliss “peg” the Chevy’s speedometer and take the needle around to the other side; or watching him land a small plane on a farm-to-market road just for kicks.  

Irresponsible for a man twenty-two to take a boy fourteen on such a wild ride? Even reckless? Yep. But Arliss sensed that lifting my spirits was worth the risk. Most men of that age have little time or patience for a boy as immature as I was.

Panhandle distances and my parents’ sympathy gave me a lot of latitude when I began dating. I remember stopping at an all night café on Route 66 on the outskirts of Vega late one night. Arliss sat alone in a booth, having a piece of pie and a glass of tea.

We had both been out courting, and it gave me a sense of camaraderie with my older cousin. He regaled me with rapid fire jokes until my sides hurt from laughing. I still repeat at least one of those jokes (my all-time favorite), but I can never match his storytelling skills.

I grew to love my new home and enjoyed the growing relationship I had with my cousin. But my parents were never really happy out there and we moved back in less than three years. I was bitter again.

I found myself afoot on the last night before we moved, and Arliss tossed me the keys to his new Chevy (or was it the ’57?). 

In my mind, it will always be the ’57, but what matters is that he loaned a very nice car to an unhappy, angry kid not quite seventeen so that he could have one last fling before leaving the life he loved behind.

I also can’t remember if I actually heard the argument he had with his father when he bought a new car or if I have been told the story so many times it has become a visual image to me. I do remember his famous words after being severely dressed down by my uncle. “Don’t know what to tell you, Dad. Just work hard and save all your money.” That still makes me laugh.

I saw him only at funerals and rare reunions after I left the Panhandle until I began occasionally traveling to Amarillo on business more than three decades later. I always made it a point to look him up. The visits were always entertaining. I got to know him man to man and found him to a very complex character.

He, like a lot of us, struggled with balancing discipline and praise when raising children. He had trouble showing affection or expressing his deepest emotions to those he loved most.

We shared a tendency to speak our minds and to see things in black and white and not in shades of gray. We were both stubborn when our minds were made up. Our tendencies often led to words best left unspoken. Talking about it helped.

During one of my business trips, Arliss and I parked near a grain elevator between the place where he grew up and the farm where I lived during my Panhandle years. It was an overcast, cold, and of course, windy day—a good time to reminisce.

I recalled memorizing the exact miles from the main highway to the turnoff that led to my house because it was easy for a boy used to corner posts and big trees as landmarks to get lost. Out there, all roads looked pretty much the same.

We talked about how the grain facility office served double duty as a community center back in the day and the time I saw my parents dance there for the first and last time. And about how I grew to love the big sky, arid air, and wide open spaces carved up into square and rectangle giant farms and ranches with little distinguishable features to the unpracticed eye. I even grew to be comfortable with the more or less constant wind.

But my parents never adapted. They missed giant shade trees, landmarks, creeks, and bois d’arc fences. They wanted a farm measured in acres instead of sections—one they could farm with one tractor—one you could “get your arms around”. Maybe a few cows. The roots of their youth called them home.

On the day of our talk, I had just had a business book published and Arliss knew about it. He said he wanted to buy one for himself and one for each of his “bull barn” buddies.

I appreciated that, but told him that this was a business type of book written for a target market. I doubted that he or his friends who farmed would find it useful or interesting. Besides, the publisher had not provided any copies for me to sell.

He turned to me as if I had insulted him. “You wrote it, didn’t you?”

I nodded and he pulled out a roll of bills, started counting twenties before he came across a hundred. He handed the hundred to me and said, “How many will that buy?” That gesture describes him about as well as anything could, I think. I made sure he got his books.

We kept in touch over the years until health problems that had plagued him a large part of his adult life overcame his indomitable spirit.  I was honored when his wife and children asked me to serve as a pallbearer. We left for the Panhandle at once.

Next week: High Plains Tribute—My recollections of what happened when I saw Arliss for the last time.

*Save the date. Go Down Looking signing party is May 9. Invitations will be mailed and available on my website. 

Find the Flow . . . Hear the Music

Go Down Looking Launch and Excerpt

Save the date. Go Down Looking launch party.

Wednesday May 9, 5 to 8 P. M. @A&M-Commerce Alumni Center

Here’s an excerpt:

On Friday night, Jake Rivers stood on the warped two-by-eight boards that served as a walkway behind the bucking chutes at the Kow Bell Rodeo in Honey Grove, Texas. Although the bareback rigging under his arm was well used, Jake knew it sent the wrong message.

He had already compared himself to the real cowboys and knew he came up short. He felt fresh off his mother’s breast, as shiny and unused as a new nickel when he sought advice from the wizened, teeth-missing, scarred-up twenty-somethings that were his competitors.

He had located his horse and was waiting patiently for his turn to rig her up. Her name was Eagle’s Nest, and she looked almost pitiful in the chute—a long-legged, ribs-showing mare with a dull coat and tangled mane. Something drained from both cloudy eyes and flies worked feverishly at whatever it was.

As was his practice, Jake did not seek information about her pattern of bucking.  Thinking about getting thrown will cause you to get thrown, he figured.

As Jake dropped to his knees to pull the cinch tight and tie off the latigo strap, he felt a spur rowel against his thigh.

He looked over at a seen-better-days pair of cowhide boots encrusted with manure. The sole stitching had long since worn through or disintegrated from cattle manure and urine, leaving only several wraps of adhesive tape to hold the soles and vamps together.

The tops, black with red piping, were short and had deep scallops made deeper with a dull pocket knife. The legs of a pair of frayed Levi’s dropped partially inside the boot tops.

“Rooster” had been carved into the widest set of spur straps Jake had ever seen. Buckles that had once been shiny and baling wire under tall, slanted heels kept the spurs from slipping, but allowed just enough room for the jingle bobs to jingle.

The boots and spurs belonged to an older cowboy sunk way down in his worn-out hat. A four inch brim with tattered edges shaded a face that had already seen too much sun and a narrow nose that seemed out of sync with the rest of the face.

One clear blue eye and one unfocused eye with a scar under it stared at Jake. “You draw Eagle’s Nest?”

Jake turned back to the latigo before answering. “Yep.”

“Wanna know what she’s gonna do?”

“Nope.” Jake’s answer was soft and under his breath. He knew the cowboy would see him as downright stupid for such an attitude.

“She’ll go right when they open the gate. Buck two, maybe three friendly jumps, then go over in that corner right over there.”

Jake straightened and turned. It was too late to avoid the advice now. “Then what?”

The cowboy was already walking back along the planks. He turned only his head. His smile revealed two missing teeth. “Then you’ll find out why they call her Eagle’s Nest.”

Jake found a good seat and snuggled his right hand deep in the rigging handle. A hang-up and dragging at a buckout had spooked Jake, so he had cut back on the glove and handle resin. He didn’t want things too sticky.

As he raised his left hand and leaned back, he pulled his right hand out of the handle just enough to get it out in case of an emergency, then nodded for the gate.

He marked her out good, holding spurs to shoulders through the first jump. He felt good and loose as she made two more. Pretty easy to keep his spurring in rhythm.

But he went tight as a fiddle string when he found himself in the corner. He had little experience with bucking horses, but had to think that what happened next was somewhat abnormal, especially for a scrawny, sickly horse.

The horse reared almost straight up and came down bone-jarring hard on her front feet. Jake was thrown forward and almost turned upside down on the horse’s side. But the bronc- riding angels seemed to be with him as his hand stayed in the handle and the old mare bucked just the right amount to return him to his seat.

Jake managed to lean back and dig in the spurs for the next jump. An eternity-second passed as the horse seemed to give up. When she squatted, Jake thought she was going to fall over and die. He raked the spurs across her shoulder and all four of her legs came off the ground at about the six second mark.

She went higher than seemed normal for a horse to jump, fishtailed, kicked out both legs, and broke in two. That’s when he wished he had left his hand deep in the rigging.

When it came out, he felt as if he were flying, flopping in the air like a wounded duck. He worried about hitting the horse on his way down.

But Eagle’s Nest had done this before. She stepped out of the way with the grace of a ballet dancer. She passively watched her defeated cowboy come down beside her. Jake’s landing was clear, smooth, flat and hard.

Eagle’s nest stared at him for a second of two before calmly walking toward the open gate that beckoned her and the good supper that waited.

He saw his father for a few seconds just after landing, maybe a second or two in the air, about the time that the eight second buzzer sounded. A translucent vision of Rance stood over him as he lay on the ground and asked, “How’s this bronc-riding working out for you, Jake?”

When the vision disappeared, Jake’s first thought was that his back might be broken. He felt numb. His second thought was about the laughter as he flailed through the air.

A grinning rodeo clown bent over him. “Damn, boy, she sure sent you flyin’. Anything broke?”

Jake took the clown’s hand and stood up, checking his back and legs. The applause was less than the pain, and there was almost no pain. He had been lucky and knew it. But it would take him almost two weeks to earn back that entry fee.

Jake was disgusted with himself, and getting away from that rodeo was suddenly important. He retrieved his borrowed rigging and kept his head down as he walked toward his car. He had been carrying the rigging around in the back seat like some sort of trophy of his manhood, a symbol of his cowboy dreams, for most of the summer.

Tonight, he threw it in the trunk.

Winter's Bone

Did you see the award winning movie (nominated for four Academy Awards) Trailer?  You should still read the book.  Both are worth the time. The movie is an independent film and uses a lot of amateurs taken from their day jobs to play significant roles. It was filmed on location without a big budget. Don’t let any of that deter you. The film benefits from it all. The director manages to deftly convert what might be weaknesses into strengths.   

Daniel Woodrell, like many of my favorite authors, is often compared to Faulkner. But Faulkner is not one of my favorites. Go figure. In this novel, Woodrell tells a haunting tale of sixteen-year-old Ree Dolly, a girl of the Missouri Ozarks(the area between St. Louis and Memphis). Ree’s father, like many members of her family and the mountain community, cooks meth. And he is out on bail and missing.

Ree’s mother is catatonic, leaving Ree in charge of her two young brothers. The sheriff tells her that the family may lose their home and their land because her father has pledged it as part of the bail bond that has now been violated. To save their home, Ree has to find her father and convince him to return or prove that he is dead. She believes him dead, because Dollys never run. And Dollys never give up their property.  

Ree’s quest pulls back the thin, secretive veneer from life in this mountain community, exposing the carcass like a freshly-skinned deer (sorry, ladies). Woodrell’s exceptional use of language allows us to see the harsh, brutal, and bloody reality of the strange code of secrecy and distorted sense of honor that binds her family and her neighbors together against the outside world. Ree’s quest is cold, violent, dark and dangerous, but her courage is uplifting. I won’t spoil the climax other than to say it is riveting.  

Update on Go Down Looking

Final approval on cover revisions and manuscript issued yesterday. Book should go to press next week and pre-market copies should be available by late April or early May. Full distribution on Amazon and other national outlets won't be complete until about three months. That three months is when important marketing is done. Publisher and I will be only available sources for books until that happens. Thanks for asking. I will let everyone on my list know and will make signed copies easy to obtain. If you are not on my e-mail or snail mail list and would like to be, let me know. 

Aunt Hido and the Buttermilk Pie

My great-grandfather and his brother married sisters. And so it went with my father and his brother. Or I guess I could say that my mother and her sister married brothers. Whichever is the correct order, the marriages gave me double cousins.  Having a couple of extra sisters and an extra brother was a good deal. My sister and I seldom argued, but my older brother knew how to push all the right buttons to make me come out futilely swinging.  

I seldom had a cross word, however, with my cousins. Their home was always a place to go when I needed to get away from home. I liked the fact that, in some fashion, I was related to everyone they were related to.

Daddy was sick a lot when we were kids and no doctor seemed to know how to get him well  He had digestive problems that grew progressively worse for almost a decade. He spent four years going in and out of hospitals.Until Dr. Olen Janes correctly diagnosed his problem, it looked as if we would lose him.

I was the youngest and Mother usually took me along when Daddy had to be hospitalized while my older siblings were allowed to stay at home or with friends or relatives. When the absences were really long and it looked as if Daddy might not survive, she had to find places for all of us to board.

  

I stayed with several wonderful aunts and uncles, but most of my time was spent with Aunt Hildred and Uncle Arch.  Readers of my Rivers Trilogy will know them as Tillie and Seth. Here’s an excerpt about Tillie from Rivers Flow. Jake walked past the table toward his room, but Tillie blocked his exit from the kitchen. She took him in her arms and hugged and patted him. Jake felt himself start to cry and jerked away to try to regain his composure. 

Sometimes, Arch and Hildred had all three of us. They had three children of their own and times were tough.  Imagine adding one, two or even three extra mouths to feed, laundry to do, etc.  I missed my daddy, but I was used to long periods away from him.  A boy that age really needs his mother.  She's usually the one who finds the right clothes and packs the right lunch for school. And you can cry in front of her, admit your fears, and not be too ashamed.

Aunt Hildred seemed to know when I needed Mother the most and she did her utmost to fill that role.  When she wanted to comfort me, she would be Aunt Hido (Hildred was first called Hido by my brother, Richard, who inspired the character Tuck in Rivers Flow) and I would be Shim. She could always make me laugh and feel better. 

I never felt like an intruder in her home.  Everyone in the family shared with me. They at least pretended they were glad to see me come and unhappy to see me go home.  Aunt Hildred would have it no other way.  I can only imagine the burden we placed on her, but she never once let it show.  Of course, Uncle Arch was also welcoming, but I don’t recall his doing much laundry or cooking. 

Aunt Hido was a great cook. I loved her biscuits more than my mother’s and was never disappointed at her table. During one of my extended stays at her house, I came home from school and discovered a freshly-made buttermilk pie in her kitchen. I had a strong sweet tooth. Time (or nausea) has dimmed a lot of the details, but I was either alone in the house or my cousin Kay left me alone with that pie. Either way, the pie was sliced, and I tasted my first piece of the most delicious pie I had ever eaten. I decided that she would not mind if I had another slice.

When Aunt Hido told the story over the subsequent years, she maintained that I ate the whole pie. I think Kay helped, and that, using some sort of childish logic, we left only a slice or two for the others.

One thing is certain. I was very, very sick—so sick I could not even glance at buttermilk pie for thirty years. Instead of arriving home to find a warm dessert for the whole family, Aunt Hido found an empty pie plate and a very sick little boy—a real test for even a patient person.

Do you know what she did?  After putting a cold wet cloth on my head, she laughed.  She laughed.   I was mortified for doing something so thoughtless and stupid. And, I thought I was going to die for my sin. I was sick enough to wish for it. But Aunt Hido got me to laugh.  And we laughed about that until we lost her. 

About twenty years after the pie incident, I returned to my old stomping grounds to open a business. I also took up racquetball. One of my fellow players (a college professor) turned to me soon after I started playing and asked if my name was Ainsworth. Well, I had just put up a big sign near downtown Commerce and I assumed he had seen it. I guess my head swelled a little when I nodded, expecting congratulations.

But it wasn’t the sign that made him recognize my name. “You related to Hildred Ainsworth?”  I was proud to say that I was her nephew.

“Well, you must be proud. She is one of the nicest ladies I have ever met. And she bakes cookies that are nectar of the gods.”

Yep. He knew her all right. Aunt Hildred was working maintenance at the college and cleaned his office. The professor didn’t recognize my name from a big sign or the business I had opened or anything I had done, but by the good humor and good deeds from a very, very fine woman. I learned a valuable lesson that day. My aunt knew what was important. She didn’t preach it, she just practiced it.

Bloodworth, McCarthy and William Gay

Bloodworth

I have had a few responses from readers who read Provinces of Night based on my recommendation. Some shared my view that the book was terrific; others not so much. Everyone agreed that William Gay is a wordsmith. Thanks to all who took the time.

I received All the Pretty Horses as a gift many years ago. When I started reading Cormac McCarthy’s novel, I was put off by the long sentences and the sparse punctuation. But I stuck with it and am glad that I did. McCarthy is one of Gay’s favorite authors and he includes a quote from his writing in at least one of his books. I started my most recent novel trying to leave out the apostrophes on slang dialogue, (as well as quotation marks) but found out I am neither McCarthy nor Gay. I gave it up because I think my readers would be put off.

The responses I received from Provinces readers led to today’s review of the movie based on Gay’s book. Here is a portion of the letter I wrote William Gay, the author, after seeing Bloodworth.

I traveled to Tennessee in 2009 and you were gracious enough to sit down and chat with me for most of an afternoon.  As I told you then, Provinces of Night is my favorite novel of all time.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching Hal Holbrook in That Evening Sun after reading your story collection, so I eagerly anticipated watching Bloodworth and was pleased to see Kris Kristofferson featured on the cover of Cowboys and Indians magazine. I finally got to see it this weekend and thought you might be interested on a viewer’s take on the movie.  

I enjoyed the movie and think Kris did a credible job with E. F., although I think you created a character a lot stronger than he played him. He sort of needed that conversation with the truck driver to establish himself as a man who was intelligent and crafty and who could be violent. The young actor did okay with Fleming, but I saw your novel character as not quite so angry.

I know why they had to leave out Albright, but I really hated not seeing him. That pig scene was one of the funniest I have ever read, though I see why they could not reenact it. I also hated that they left out Warren’s son.

Val Kilmer was close to perfect as Doc Holliday in Tombstone, but he bombs as Warren. Warren was, I thought, all wrong both in costume and mannerisms. Your book portrayed Warren, Medal of Honor winner that he was, as much stronger, less of a drunken fool. He was a hard-drinking, hard-living  man who also had a soft streak for his brother’s son, and his own son, of course (that was my take, at least). I would have dressed him in the costume of the day for a handsome man who made a lot of money and did not mind throwing it around, just couldn’t settle down, but far from the vain fool Kilmer portrayed.  I guess they had a hard time with him because the time period in the book is different than the movie.

I usually like Kilmer and Yoakum, but I also thought Dwight Yoakum got Boyd wrong. I saw Boyd as one of the most sympathetic characters in your book. He was an absent father and far from perfect man who lived by a black and white code. “Take my wife, I take your life.” His son’s literary pursuits may have made him uncomfortable, but he usually brought Fleming a book or two to read when he returned from one of his gallivants. This showed his pride and love for the boy and that really rounded him as a complex character. Also, Boyd and Fleming worked hard side by side and Boyd usually brought home food when he returned. And the book’s killing was much more credible than the one in the movie.

The guy who played Brady did a credible job. I certainly like Barry Corbin and enjoyed seeing him in That Evening Sun too, but I was disappointed not to see Itchy-Mama and those great old men on the porch. They had some of the best lines in the book.

I know it must have been difficult for the screenwriter to try to capture the rich characters you created. Congratulations on having the book made into a movie. I may not be able to write best-sellers, but I know a great author when I see one. I have said “I told you so” to lots of folks when the movies came out.

And what did Gay say to all this? Nothing. Remember? He’s reclusive. 

I maintain that Gay can make words sing with both humor and raw emotion. Here’s an example of what was left out of the movie. Albright, a young ne’er-do-well who has a propensity for getting himself into awful predicaments, has to take a hog as payment for painting a barn. His only means of transportation is a car he has painted as a taxicab. He has to transport the hog in the back seat. He looked back and the hog was studying him with something akin to speculation. Halfway across the railroad trestle over the river the hog seemed taken with some sort of fit. It . . . made a razorous slash in the upholstery and dragged out a mouthful of stuffing. . . . He turned in the seat and began to beat the hog about the head and shoulders with his fists. Quit it, he yelled.

The hog manages to escape, of course, and Albright goes after him, leaving his car on the one-lane trestle. A farmer in overalls stops behind the car and looks over the bridge as Albright wrestles with the hog on the river bank. You was to move your car I’d get on out of your way and you could go on about your business. The interruptions breaks Albright’s concentration and the hog uses the moment to escape. The farmer continues. If that’s your hog, and I got no reason to suspect it ain’t, then you can do whatever you want to. But you’re holdin up traffic here. . . . I never knowed anybody to hogfarm out of a taxicab anyway.

This book has humor, but it is dark, too. Consider this scene with E. W. Bloodworth, the character played by Kristofferson.  Bloodworth’s wife Julia has sent word to her father (Bradshaw) to come for her. Bloodworth vows to kill him before he will allow him to take her away.  He’s here because I sent for him, Julia said. I don’t know why anybody would send for a dead man, he told her. I’ll stretch out Bradshaws till they hold each other up like trees felled in a thick woods.  . . . They ain’t quit makin shells. They ain’t quit makin caskets. I’ll stretch out Bradshaws from the biggest to the least, till they have to import caskets out of other states, till they run dry on that and bury them without caskets, till they finally throw up their hands and let em lay where they fall.

He held her finally back to his chest and the soapy smell of her hair in his face and clamped in arms that would not constrain her urgency. If you do that, you’ll have to kill me, too, she finally said. Did I ever hurt you? he asked. You hurt me ever breath I take, she told him. He laid the pistol aside and watched the door close behind her and watched her climb aboard the wagon and watched the old man speak not to her but to the mules, popping the lines and turning the wagon into the dusty roadbed, watched the wagon diminish into the white dust until there was nothing to see but dust settling, and watching even that.

One more excerpt about Bloodworth’s banjo playing. He had a tale to tell. He made you believe it was your tale as well. Police came to tell him to move it along and stayed to listen. Sometimes they even dropped their own half dollars into the hat. Bloodworth sang songs he’d heard and songs he’d made up and songs he’d stolen from other singers. He sang about death and empty beds and songs that sounded like invitations until you thought about them for a while and then they began to sound like threats. Violence ran through them like heat lightning, winter winds whistled them along like paper cups turning hollowly down frozen streets.

Why would you leave those scenes out of a movie?

Once Upon A River and Nashville Chrome

Once Upon A River

Sixteen-year-old Margo Crane is a river girl. That would be the Stark and Kalamazoo Rivers in Michigan. The rivers are connected and Margo eventually lives on both. Margo is beautiful. Margo is earthy. She is an expert with weapons and her heroine is Annie Oakley. Interested yet? Bonnie Jo Campbell has created a character I will not soon forget.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially the Depression Era, seem to have spawned characters we have dubbed mountain people, hillbillies, rednecks, river rats, etc. . . And those characters had children that adopted their parents’ dialect and culture. I like the way they (we) talk and their culture fascinates me, especially their music. But I had not heretofore considered Michigan in the seventies a place or time to find these characters.

Campbell proves me wrong. The Cranes and the Murrays carry on a late twentieth century feud worthy of the Hatfields and McCoys of West Virginia and the back country of Kentucky or the Sutton-Taylor feud of Texas. But this novel is not about the 1970’s feud; it’s about a beautiful teenage girl who seems to be part fish and part wolverine. She belongs to nature, to the river where her father and grandfather taught her how to navigate and how to survive. That teaching becomes essential.

Warning: This book can be raw. There is violence, sexual and otherwise. And you will learn how to skin a muskrat whether you want to or not. Bonnie Jo Campbell makes it all believable. This National Book Award finalist is not exactly an amateur and this is fine work.  Once Upon A River 

Nashville Chrome

I know, I found the title a little off kilter, too. And the cover is awful. Do you remember the Browns? Not to worry, most people I asked don’t recognize this singing trio, either. But I can almost guarantee you will recognize their songs (“Little Jimmy Brown, The Old Lamplighter, The Three Bells”).

Back in 1959, the brother and two sisters had few peers in the music world. Only Elvis rivaled their international musical success. And get this: Elvis was their close friend. Bonnie was his sweetheart, at least in this novel. If you think that sounds far-fetched, think again.

If you’re not into country or pop music of the late fifties and early sixties, I still think you will find much to like in this book. It is lyrical, yet an easy, compelling read, made better by knowing it is a novel based on real events, real people—famous people.

I have already confessed to my love for country music and country people. But you don’t have to be a fan to love this story. Accomplished, multiple award-winning author Rick Bass weaves facts into his fiction with artful, plaintive grace. A writer who can make you hear the music he describes is well, excellent at what he does. Readers can hear the songs as Bass tells the Browns’ sad story. You will also believe his description of how the Browns achieved perfect pitch by listening to the elusive tone of a well-tempered saw blade at their parents’ Arkansas lumber mill.

And those secret visits Elvis made to the Arkansas hills to visit the Browns, especially Bonnie . . . need I say more? Nashville Chrome.