Susanna Dickinson is one of the most legendary women in Texas history. Married to Captain Almaron Dickinson, she and her infant daughter Angelina were among the few survivors of the Battle of the Alamo. General Santa Anna was impressed with Dickinson and even offered to adopt Angelina and have her educated in Mexico. Santa Anna eventually released Dickinson and her daughter so she could spread word of his victory and tell the story of the Alamo.

Noted Texas author, Rita Kerr tells Susannah Dickinson’s story in this fictional biography that gives juvenile readers an inside account of the Alamo and life in early Texas.

Written by Rita Kerr

Paperback - 76 pages

Sam Houston is a Texas icon. General Houston signed the Texas Declaration of Independence on his 43^rd birthday, and six weeks later he led the Texas Army to a spectacular victory at San Jacinto. “Old Sam Jacinto” twice was elected president of the Republic of Texas; he served thirteen years as U.S. Senator from the State of Texas; and he won election as governor of the Lone Star State.

Before he came to Texas Houston twice lived with the Cherokee. As a young army officer he was severely wounded while leading charges at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, and while still in his twenties Houston became major general of the Tennessee State Militia. In Tennessee he was elected to Congress and to the governorship, ultimately becoming the only man ever elected governor of two states. He knew and worked with fourteen consecutive U.S. presidents, from Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln, as well as Jefferson Davis, who became president of the Confederacy.

SUNSHINE ON THE PRAIRIE is the story of CYNTHIA ANN PARKER, captured by a band of Comanches as a nine-year-old while living in Fort Parker with her family. It was 24 years before she was "re-captured" by her "white family". This is the intriguing story of why she did not want to be rescued from her Comanche family. During her 24-year captivity, she had become a wife to Nocona, the most feared of the Comanche war chiefs and the mother of Quanah, last and most famous of the Comanche war chiefs. Cynthia Ann adopted completely the lifestyle and culture of the Comanches. She endured their hardships and she also learned to love the freedom of the pristine wilderness. Using exhaustive research, the author follows Cynthia's footprints over the prairie with a sensitivity rare among non-native Americans.

Ray grew up in the heart of roping country and competed against some of the toughest cowboys the sport of rodeo has ever known. If you were a roper, the 1950s was a tough era to make a living, having to rope against the like of seven-time world champion tie-down roper Toots Mansfield or five-time world champion Don McLaughlin. But Ray more than held his own, winning the world championship in 1956 and was runner-up to the world title three times.

During his long career, Ray competed and won just about every major rodeo in the country. He won money at New York’s Madison Square Garden, San Francisco’s Cow Palace and all points in between. But he always called Bandera, Texas, home. Rodeo gave Ray the means to acquire land and live the only life he ever wanted, the life of a cowboy.

The diarist, Nicholas Adolphus Sterne, was born in Cologne, Germany, on April 5, 1801, and migrat­ed to America sixteen years later as a fugitive from the oppressions of his native land. Settling first at New Orleans, he later moved to the Texas-Mexican frontier town of Nacogdoches where he remained until his death in 1852. Here he became an urbane, sophisticated man-of-the- world who was a mover and shaker in the early period of Texas history. As a merchant, land agent, and jurist he observed the goings and comings of many of the giants of Texas history. Not only did he participate with them in shaping the events of his time, he also recorded them with a keen sense of history.

He has been called, a savior, a philanthropist, a "good ‘ol boy," and a SOB—but one thing Joe Jamail has never been is boring!

Chisum was a true pioneer, seeking open range grass farther and farther and still farther to the west. During three decades on a succession of frontier ranches, Chisum endured Indian raids, stock thievery, drought, financial reverses, and the murderous Lincoln County War. Chisum had courage, a taste for adventure, a shrewd head for business, and he confidently operated his risky frontier profession on an enormous scale.

His last ranch was the biggest, stretching for 200 miles along the Pecos River and grazing as many as 80,000 head of Jinglebob cattle. He built a headquarters complex worthy of a cattle king, relishing the role of host to one and all. After thirty spectacular years as a western rancher, Chisum died at sixty, just as his beloved open range was being enclosed by barbed wire. But he was known throughout cow country as the "Jinglebob King," the "Cattle King of the Pecos," and the "Cattle King of the West."

Why should a respected frontier physician—one of the few of his trade in Texas— die in a mutually fatal Western-style shootout with his cousin?

Frontier Texas— from its War of Independence from Mexico, to the late 1800s— was a strictly agricultural region raising cotton and then livestock, and dotted with small villages . . . not much to draw an ambitious physician. There were, of course, no medical schools in the Republic or the succeeding State. A very few doctors were born in Texas. They went East to get their education, and then came back to their beloved homeland. William Joseph Calhoun Lawrence was one of these doctors.

Lawrence wrote letters almost daily (and kept those he received), so the author could piece together the doctor's life, his virtues and obvious faults, and that of his family, his neighbors and his Texas.

The couple owned a home, rental property, stocks, businesses, and two cars. They hobnobbed with local, state, and national dignitaries. They vacationed in faraway places like Montreal, Canada. The Sawners excelled in their respective spheres and claimed the social, political, and economic accoutrements commensurate with their successes. Material trappings and stature aside, the Sawners never severed their roots.

Despite their undeniable attainments, the Sawners, like other African Americans in Oklahoma, often swam against the current, regularly battling waves of bigotry and intolerance. Reminiscent of the Jim Crow South, the political waters in Oklahoma, particularly as they cascaded over racial matters, became increasingly contaminated.

This is their story—a tale of triumph amidst a backdrop of tragedy. George and Lena Sawner lived and, through their living, enhanced and enriched our lives in ways great and small.

The author, a member of the family, tells of an emotional and successful odyssey to find the family’s lost land grant—their “stolen heritage.” After a long search of state archives and county records, he discovered that his great-grandfather had been defrauded of land that today is in the middle of one of the largest ranches in South Texas.

His account of the family’s attempt to recover what they consider their landed heritage is charged with emotion, family feuds, and a lawsuit. This book has been called one of the best-researched books on South Texas, the history of the land and the clash of the two cultures that settled South Texas.

Billy Dixon triggered the most celebrated shot in the history of the West at the Battle of Adobe Walls in 1874. A few months later, while serving as an army scout, Billy earned a Medal of Honor during an even more desperate engagement, as one of six men battling for their lives against a band of 125 warriors at the Buffalo Wallow Fight. Both of these actions took place in the Texas Panhandle, where Dixon became an icon of heroism.

Billy ran away to the West during boyhood, eagerly seeking adventure on the frontier. He worked as a woodchopper, a trapper, a bullwhacker and a muleskinner. Dixon became a buffalo hunter, displaying exceptional skills as a sharpshooter. After almost a decade as an army scout, Dixon returned to Adobe Walls to establish a bachelor home on the sparsely-settled plains.

A fellow adventure-seeker, Olive King, came to the Panhandle from back East to visit her cowboy brothers. She became a frontier schoolmarm, and she met her famous neighbor, Billy Dixon. Billy and Olive fell in love, married, and had eight children. Olive persuaded Billy to dictate his memoirs to her, and the result was a classic frontier biography, Life of “Billy” Dixon: Plainsman, Scout, and Pioneer. During a long widowhood, Olive Dixon became a significant force in Panhandle history, helping to establish the Panhandle-Plains Museum, writing and speaking about her own pioneer experiences as well as Billy’s, and erecting impressive monuments at Adobe Walls and at Buffalo Wallow.

Tucker’s career as a lawman brought him into contact with several legends of the era, including Isaac Charles Parker, better known as the “Hanging Judge.” Tucker was also present during several of the best-known episodes in the history of the “Old West,” including the lawlessness of the Indian Territory, the Johnson County Range War in Wyoming, and the Oklahoma Land Rush.

George Redman Tucker documented his life in an unpublished manuscript that tells of his exploits in law enforcement. This manuscript was the basis of much of the information in Man Hunter in Indian Country. But the author also did extensive research to separate the facts from what could best be described as embellishment by Tucker.

The story of Bonnie and Clyde—their love, their desperate killings, and their destruction in an explosion of gun fire—has fueled an American legend more than seventy years. But it is only with this book by the last surviving officer of the six who shot Bonnie and Clyde that the full story of their capture has been told.

Ted Hinton's description of a secret, illegal police trap—hidden at the time from the press and public—is one of many revelations he draws from his intimate knowledge of the greatest manhunt of the 1930s. As a Dallas lawman he spent seventeen months, night and day, on the trail of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. He knew the notorious criminals personally from the seamy, hoodlum-ridden Dallas neighborhoods where they all grew up. He shared their code of toughness and genu­inely admired the extraordinary courage, skill, and loyalty that made Bonnie and Clyde stand out almost as heroes in the public imagination. Hinton admired them, but he never doubted that they had to be stopped. The long trail could only end in a shootout and their deaths-or his.

Hinton's experiences as a green young sheriff's deputy and his compassion for outlaw lovers give Ambush an unusual dimension of humanity. Twenty-seven photographs underscore the book's vivid au­thenticity. And the author's meticulous research, using sources avail­able to no one else, makes this the definitive work of fact. The result is a powerful human drama of crime and the law: the real story of Bonnie and Clyde.

There have been numerous book and news articles written about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, but most of the first-person accounts were given by African Americans. However, William C. "Choc" Phillips was part white and part Native American and an eyewitness to one of the most violent episodes in the history of the United States.

A teenager and high school student at the time of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, Phillips was present when the violence ignited in front of the Tulsa Courthouse and throughout the destruction that followed.

Phillips and a group of high school friends traveled the streets of Tulsa during the night of May 30 and the day on June 1. At times they were trying to get a better view of what was happening and at times trying to escape the lawlessness. They saw people murdered, buildings torched, and people treated as less than human.

The incident left a lasting impression on Phillips, and over the years, he researched and wrote his account of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. He read most of the news accounts of the time and, in later years, interviewed other eyewitnesses of the devastation. Phillips attempted to make sense of what had happened and give a balanced report of the event.

Phillips was never able to get his manuscript published when it was completed in the 1980s. Despite the death and destruction, after the passing of sixty years, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre was not a well-known event on a national level. It was as if people wanted to pretend the violence never happened or, at the very least, forget about it.

In 2021 Greenwood Rising opened in Tulsa to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and, more importantly, to educate the public. Officials with Greenwood Rising thought William C. "Choc" Phillips' account was important enough to create a display that showcases the original manuscript and the typewriter that produced it.

Obsolete from the beginning of World War II, the PBYs of U.S. Navy Patrol Bombing Squadron 23 nevertheless sighted and tracked the Japanese fleet, supplied coast watchers, carried out bombing raids, ferried wounded, hunted submarines, and performed air-sea rescue for island carrier strikes and the B-29s operating over Japan.

On Hell’s Perimeters takes you . . . from Pearl Harbor to the sighting of the enemy fleet at the Battle of Midway . . . from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima . . . from rescue of survivors of the ill-fated USS Indianapolis in the final days of the war, to the flying of surrender documents from the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

Author Bio

Don Klotz, born in Chicago, Illinois, enlisted in the Navy at age seventeen in 1943 and joined U.S. Navy Patrol Bombing Squadron 23 as a radioman-gunner, for its third tour of duty in the Pacific. After the war, Don attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and Northwestern University before beginning his career in advertising.

It was not until some fifty years later, after raising five children and nearing retirement, that he began a search for Navy comrades and undertook a compilation of the squadron’s history.

The Ride captures the heartbeat of the man and the moment in this profoundly moving historical narrative that will leave readers in suspense. For what happened next would forever be etched in rodeo history and lore . . .

Somewhere Out There, There’s More is a deeply personal and eye-opening memoir about adoption, identity, and the stories we think we know about ourselves.

For decades, the author believed she understood her adoption story so well that she wrote her first book, Somewhere Out There: My Experience of Adoption and My Search for Understanding. But years later, a shocking discovery revealed that what she had been told—and what she had believed—was not the whole truth.

Her journey began with a simple and practical need: medical history. Like many adoptees, she had little to no accurate information about her origins. What started as a search for health records became an investigation that exposed the barriers adoptees face when trying to access their own histories—and the carefully crafted narratives adoption agencies often provided.

Adopted through the Homestead Maternity Home in Fort Worth, Texas, the author uncovers how agencies “marketed” children to adoptive parents, often repeating identical and sometimes misleading birth-parent profiles. With the help of a professional searcher—and her own persistence—she follows the trail from Texas to Hawaii to North Dakota, discovering just how small the world can be, and how complicated the truth often is.

Drawing on her experience as a professional counselor, the author explores the feelings of abandonment, emptiness, and longing that many adoptees experience at some point in their lives. She reflects honestly on reunion, connection, and the realization that finding biological family does not automatically make someone whole. DNA, she reminds us, does not define family.

Written with vulnerability, insight, and unexpected twists, Somewhere Out There, There’s More is for anyone touched by adoption—adoptees, adoptive parents, birth families, and professionals—as well as readers who enjoy heartfelt stories of self-discovery. Ultimately, it is a powerful reminder that self-acceptance is the journey we all share, and that even when we think the story is complete, there may always be more.