Mixing the profile with the personal essay, plain storytelling with reporting and the fanciful, Bill Porterfield, in this collection of short pieces, prances out a memorable cast of his characters from the Texas heartland.
"Loose herd" is about as tight a noose of definition as you can draw around their collective necks. Clarence of Green Mansions is a mystic with a two-thousand-year-old memory; J. D. Graham ekes out a living as owner of a general store in the dried-up crossroads of The Grove; Old Juan lives in a hole in the ground and defies anyone to bother him; Larry Bowman became...