Tracy Daugherty
$15
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With heart and humor, Tales from the Bayou City chronicles 15 years in the life of Houston, Texas, as the city negotiates volatile changes in economic health, race relations, immigration laws, and neighborhood viability. George Palmer, a freelance folklorist, and a keen traveler of Houston’s broken byways, gathers stories few ever hear among backstreets few choose to wander. He shoulders the burdens borne by “Mama Houston’s” children and struggles to redefine “family” in a culture determined, it seems, to tear communities apart.
TRACY DAUGHERTY was born in Midland, Texas. He is Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at Oregon State University. He has written biographies of several important American writers. These include Hiding Man, about his former teacher, Donald Barthelme; Just One Catch, about Joseph Heller; and The Last Love Song, about Joan Didion. His other published works include the novels Desire Provoked (1986), What Falls Away (1996), The Boy Orator (1999), and Axeman’s Jazz (2003).
Reviews
“No one has written this well of Houston, ever, catching the run-down, random quality of it, and the nuances, the rough and the smooth, of different neighborhoods, of the diversity of populations. Not many have Daugherty’s conscience, his moral connectedness, his passion for the hidden and suppressed lives all around us.”
—Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After
“Tracy Daugherty’s characters have a stubborn, wonderful realness to them, the sign of a writer absolutely alert to the complex world around us.”
—Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever