The Hand of Lou Diamond--by Guest: Dac Crossley

“Texas is hell on women and horses.”

I’m impressed by how many strong women come from Texas roots. In a time when they were second-class citizens, many women had instincts for survival that surprise us today.

In my new novel, “The Hand of Lou Diamond,” I imagine the plight of a young woman thrust out into the world with little to guide her except her instincts for survival.

The character Nicolette Devereux, aka Lou Diamond, is based in part on Frank Tolbert’s character Dulce Deno from his novel “The Staked Plain,” and in part on the real-life gambling woman Lottie Deno. But also on the life of my grandmother, Ida-May DeRyee. She grew to woman-hood in Corpus Christi and attended a finishing school in Nashville, Tennessee. Here she is with her fellow students. Ida-May is the one on the far right.

Ida-May settled into a comfortable life, married her high-school sweetheart and had two lively boys. Then her husband died, her father had a stroke, and they relocated to San Francisco where her brother lived. Soon her younger son died, then her mother and her brother. She was left with a young boy and an aging father to care for, and no source of income.

Is that an old, familiar tale in Texas? Ida-May rose to the occasion. She worked nights in a bakery, wrapping loaves of bread, while she attended business school. She sent her father to a German home in Comfort, Texas, and her son to live with Grandparents in Corpus.

Eventually she gathered them all together and found employment as a bookkeeper. She retired from a position at Missouri Pacific Railroad. I thought of my grandmother often while I was crafting  
The Hand of Lou Diamond.

We write fiction, don’t we, but is it so far from reality? As I age, memory blends the two. I want my western novels to be historically accurate – God help you if you place a gun in the wrong period, or write something incorrect about a horse. The stories that we writers tell slip easily through the veil. I hope my grandmother would approve of Lou Diamond.

 BLURB:
Young Nicolette Devereux, an orphan raised in a San Francisco brothel, is sent to a Nashville finishing school for young ladies. Dismissed, she must make her way back, relying on her wits and her skill at card games. Handsome riverboat gambler Ethan Diamond takes Nicolette in hand, but then sells her to a New Orleans brothel. She avoids prostitution with her skills at poker under the name Lou Diamond. She accompanies Ethan when he returns for her. Does he love her? Nicolette is unsure about her feelings for him. Can she break free of him and return to San Francisco? Texas gets in her way.

Dac Crossley

October 25, 2016

“The world forgets easily, too easily, what it does not like to remember.” – Jacob Riis

I’m D. A. Crossley, Jr., a retired professor at the University of Georgia. My nickname is “Dac.” I’m an emeritus professor of ecology. And a curator emeritus of ticks and mites in the Georgia Museum of Natural History.

And I write fiction.

I grew up in a little city in south Texas, Kingsville. It's the home of the famous King Ranch. Grandma King donated land for the city. It was also the home of railroad shops for the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico railway company. Everybody in town worked for the railroad or the ranch, or did business with them.

After WWII I went to the local college, Texas A&I, and soon migrated to Lubbock, to Texas Tech in the Panhandle. I started as an English major but fell under the influence of a charismatic biology teacher. I never looked back.

My doctorate was in Entomology at the University of Kansas, where I studied the classification of chiggers - redbugs. I think I'm still the U.S. expert. I'm the survivor.

After the University I was hired at Oak Ridge National Lab as an ecologist. Which I surely wasn't. In those days (1950's) almost nobody was. I looked at the effects of radioactive waste on forests and fields. A fortunate turn brought me to the University of Georgia, where I had the privilege of working with some excellent ecologists.

With retirement looking me in the face, I turned to my first career choice - writing. And hit my stride in writing about South Texas in its pre-civilized days. The Old West lived on for decades down near the Border and in the Wild Horse Desert. Family stories and tales I was told as a child form the basis for my Texas novels.

I am a widower with one daughter, Mary Freeman, a stream ecologist of note, and two sons Greg and Steve Blankenship, contractors, green builders.

 Dac's previous releases, available on Amazon.

1. 
   $12.90
   Paperback
2. 
   $4.99
   Kindle Edition
3. 
   $1.86
   Paperback
4. 
   $4.99
   Kindle Edition
5. 
   $9.99
   Kindle Edition
6. 
   $14.95
   Paperback

Contact

Dac Crossley

www.daccrossley.typepad.com

www.daccrossley.com/

Guest Author on Sweethearts of the West--invited and posted by Celia Yeary