Status
Available
Publication
G.P. Putnam's Sons (1994), Edition: First Edition; First Printing, 464 pages
Description
Based on the author's own family, the adventures of Texans Euphemia, Georgia, and Bettie, as well as other female relatives of differing racial backgrounds.
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User reviews
LibraryThing member countrylife
This book, being highly recommended in the Texas History group here at LT, became my Texas read for the Fifty States reading challenge. According to the folks in that group, this book came about as Mrs. Windle was putting together a book of family stories and recipes for her new daughter-in-law. In
This book is a chronicle of Texas history, from the after-effects of the Alamo through World War II.
It is a painting of the Texas landscape where the different lady’s stories took place.
It is a genealogy, of sorts. I found myself often referring back to the photographs on the inside covers, which depict the branches of the author’s family tree.
It is, above all, a story of real women, realistically told.
I enjoyed this author’s writing. As a recent transplant to Texas, I intend to find more of her books to help me ‘catch up’ on my new state’s history in an enjoyable way. If you like historical fiction, get immersed in this book! Here’s what you can expect (from the first chapter):
“Vivid stories of the women in my family had been passed down mother to daughter, grandmother to granddaughter, aunt to niece, and even father to daughter, for six generations: stories about the widows of the Alamo and how Euphemia nearly died in the Runaway Scrape and how her sister Sarah outsmarted the Comanches, stories about the women in my family who lived and loved and died in a river of time reaching back to the Alamo and Sam Houston. They were great epic tales of war and adventure, love and murder, violence and redemption. …
Was Euphemia Texas really there when the Widows of Gonzales found refuge at Peach Creek and when Sam Houston’s rag-tag army routed Santa Anna at San Jacinto? Could she ride and shoot like a man? And how did she manage to survive a life constantly plagued by war and violence, by wild Comanches and dread Republicans? Did my great-grandmother Georgia Lawshe really risk her plantation running the Yankee cotton blockade and did she help her children kill the Yankee officer? Did Aunt Sweet really fire on the advancing Yankee column from the balcony of their home? Was another of my great-grandmothers, Bettie King , really left alone all night as a small girl to protect the bodies of her dead friends from a pack of hungry wolves? And did that wonderful cast of characters really pass through their lives and their homes: Thomas Jefferson, Sam Houston, Santa Anna, Juan Seguin, the Queen of Tuckabatchee, Robert E. Lee, Teddy Roosevelt, the Comanche chief Iron Jacket, General Henry McCullock, Pink Rosebud, Precious Honey Child, and Reverend Andrew Jackson Potter?
So I began my search for the daughters of Euphemia Texas. I revisited their homes and their graves. I pored through boxes of accumulated family documents and photographs brought out from under beds and down from attics. I interviewed surviving relatives, studied letters, diaries, maps, census records, death certificates, deeds, and land grants. I began to piece together an authentic version of the stories I’d heard as a child. In almost every detail, oral tradition and the historical record were identical.”
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the process, she decided that the stories were too big for that little project and, in the end, they became THIS book. As Texans say, ‘everything is bigger in Texas’. The women in this author’s family certainly did big things. Their stories are so fascinating, that the book was made into a tv movie in 1997. This book is a chronicle of Texas history, from the after-effects of the Alamo through World War II.
It is a painting of the Texas landscape where the different lady’s stories took place.
It is a genealogy, of sorts. I found myself often referring back to the photographs on the inside covers, which depict the branches of the author’s family tree.
It is, above all, a story of real women, realistically told.
I enjoyed this author’s writing. As a recent transplant to Texas, I intend to find more of her books to help me ‘catch up’ on my new state’s history in an enjoyable way. If you like historical fiction, get immersed in this book! Here’s what you can expect (from the first chapter):
“Vivid stories of the women in my family had been passed down mother to daughter, grandmother to granddaughter, aunt to niece, and even father to daughter, for six generations: stories about the widows of the Alamo and how Euphemia nearly died in the Runaway Scrape and how her sister Sarah outsmarted the Comanches, stories about the women in my family who lived and loved and died in a river of time reaching back to the Alamo and Sam Houston. They were great epic tales of war and adventure, love and murder, violence and redemption. …
Was Euphemia Texas really there when the Widows of Gonzales found refuge at Peach Creek and when Sam Houston’s rag-tag army routed Santa Anna at San Jacinto? Could she ride and shoot like a man? And how did she manage to survive a life constantly plagued by war and violence, by wild Comanches and dread Republicans? Did my great-grandmother Georgia Lawshe really risk her plantation running the Yankee cotton blockade and did she help her children kill the Yankee officer? Did Aunt Sweet really fire on the advancing Yankee column from the balcony of their home? Was another of my great-grandmothers, Bettie King , really left alone all night as a small girl to protect the bodies of her dead friends from a pack of hungry wolves? And did that wonderful cast of characters really pass through their lives and their homes: Thomas Jefferson, Sam Houston, Santa Anna, Juan Seguin, the Queen of Tuckabatchee, Robert E. Lee, Teddy Roosevelt, the Comanche chief Iron Jacket, General Henry McCullock, Pink Rosebud, Precious Honey Child, and Reverend Andrew Jackson Potter?
So I began my search for the daughters of Euphemia Texas. I revisited their homes and their graves. I pored through boxes of accumulated family documents and photographs brought out from under beds and down from attics. I interviewed surviving relatives, studied letters, diaries, maps, census records, death certificates, deeds, and land grants. I began to piece together an authentic version of the stories I’d heard as a child. In almost every detail, oral tradition and the historical record were identical.”
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LibraryThing member alaskabookworm
A much better story than the cover would lead you to believe.
LibraryThing member bookcrazed
True Women is Windle’s second novel, and like the first, Hill Country, it is based on the lives of her Texas ancestors. As the title suggests, Windle tells her family history through the eyes of its women. She begins with five-year-old Euphemia Texas Ashby watching a procession of “the widows
Euphemia (one of Windle’s maternal great great grandmothers) grows to maturity on the Texas frontier, learning how to shoot and ride, and marries William King. Their son, Henry King, weds Bettie Moss, another character whose event-filled life is dramatized by Windle. In parallel fashion, Windle relates the fictionalized lives of the Lawshe and Woods women on her father’s side of the family, until Ashbys, Kings, Lawshes, and Woods become neighbors in Seguin, Texas.
Just as the finest historical novels do, True Women embodies a history lesson, giving some insight into the motives and emotions behind the events of the time. A recurring theme in the lives of Windle’s women is war. In addition to the Texas War of Independence and the Civil War, there is the continually escalating Indian wars. In every generation of her family, men go to war, sometimes more than once; some come home maimed, others don’t come home at all. Wars fought on home soil may come to an end with the 1875 surrender of Quanah Parker’s Comanches, but the era of great overseas conflicts begin. The first war not fought on native soil by Windle’s Texas ancestors is World War I, closely followed by World War II. Observed through the eyes of these women, war appears as a young man’s obsession, an opportunity to flex the first muscles of their manhood.
Windle’s writing has improved by leaps and bounds since her first novel. She writes powerful description and often shows a wry wit, as when Bettie Moss King decides to vote for Roosevelt: “Maybe Roosevelt and John Nance Garner would bring prosperity back from wherever it had been hidden by Hoover.” And when populist Jacob Coxey declares his candidacy for president, Annie declares she cannot vote for someone endorsed by the American Martian Society.
True Women is a lengthy read that might have benefitted from less extraneous detail, undoubtedly an artifact of Windle’s amazingly prodigious research. It would be alright if I didn’t learn that the word typhoid comes from Typhon, the name of a fire-breathing monster from Greek mythology, and poor Dr. Peter Woods would be saved from so awkwardly inserting this bit of trivia in his conversation.
Windle’s women are smart, strong, courageous, persistent, and principled. She leaves us with the uneasy thought that war is how men occupy themselves while women do the work of life. She reminds us that human beings recycle their mistakes and that we have a long way to go; and that working for that inch of progress makes life worthwhile (at least we need to think so). She doesn’t write philosophically; she just writes about the real lives of real people who gave us the society into which we were born. A real treat for fans of historic fiction or tales of the Wild West.
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of the Alamo” pass through her settlement after the terrible defeat of the Texians at the Alamo mission. Euphemia and her older married sister, Sarah, are among those who must flee their homes to escape the advancing Mexican army. With all the men at war, the women and children left behind frantically bolt for the safety of the U.S. border. After the defeat of the troops led by Mexican General Santa Anna, they return home to looted, sometimes burned homesteads. Euphemia (one of Windle’s maternal great great grandmothers) grows to maturity on the Texas frontier, learning how to shoot and ride, and marries William King. Their son, Henry King, weds Bettie Moss, another character whose event-filled life is dramatized by Windle. In parallel fashion, Windle relates the fictionalized lives of the Lawshe and Woods women on her father’s side of the family, until Ashbys, Kings, Lawshes, and Woods become neighbors in Seguin, Texas.
Just as the finest historical novels do, True Women embodies a history lesson, giving some insight into the motives and emotions behind the events of the time. A recurring theme in the lives of Windle’s women is war. In addition to the Texas War of Independence and the Civil War, there is the continually escalating Indian wars. In every generation of her family, men go to war, sometimes more than once; some come home maimed, others don’t come home at all. Wars fought on home soil may come to an end with the 1875 surrender of Quanah Parker’s Comanches, but the era of great overseas conflicts begin. The first war not fought on native soil by Windle’s Texas ancestors is World War I, closely followed by World War II. Observed through the eyes of these women, war appears as a young man’s obsession, an opportunity to flex the first muscles of their manhood.
Windle’s writing has improved by leaps and bounds since her first novel. She writes powerful description and often shows a wry wit, as when Bettie Moss King decides to vote for Roosevelt: “Maybe Roosevelt and John Nance Garner would bring prosperity back from wherever it had been hidden by Hoover.” And when populist Jacob Coxey declares his candidacy for president, Annie declares she cannot vote for someone endorsed by the American Martian Society.
True Women is a lengthy read that might have benefitted from less extraneous detail, undoubtedly an artifact of Windle’s amazingly prodigious research. It would be alright if I didn’t learn that the word typhoid comes from Typhon, the name of a fire-breathing monster from Greek mythology, and poor Dr. Peter Woods would be saved from so awkwardly inserting this bit of trivia in his conversation.
Windle’s women are smart, strong, courageous, persistent, and principled. She leaves us with the uneasy thought that war is how men occupy themselves while women do the work of life. She reminds us that human beings recycle their mistakes and that we have a long way to go; and that working for that inch of progress makes life worthwhile (at least we need to think so). She doesn’t write philosophically; she just writes about the real lives of real people who gave us the society into which we were born. A real treat for fans of historic fiction or tales of the Wild West.
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Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1993
ISBN
0399138137 / 9780399138133