Texas Tears and Texas Sunshine are the names of popular quilt patterns, and in this volume, now in its seventh printing, sixteen pioneer women describe how they pieced together a life for their families on the harsh frontier. Their first-person narratives, selected and edited by Jo Ella Powell Exley, provide a gripping, highly personal history of the state from Stephen F. Austin's original settlement through the taming of its last frontier in the west. The stories in Texas Tears and Texas Sunshine cover nearly a century, from the log cabin days of Anglo colonization and the Old Three Hundred...

2001 Summerfield G. Roberts Award, presented by the Sons of the Republic of Texas Drawing on a wealth of contemporary accounts, including several first-person stories, Jo Ella Powell Exley follows Cynthia Ann-Parker-a descendant of Elder John Parker-last of the great Comanche war chiefs- through her life in the Indian camp and eventually her recapture by her birth family. She also tells the dramatic story of Quanah Parker through childhood, battle, surrender, and reservation life. This narrative sets straight a story that has sometimes been distorted, offering new insight of Cynthia Ann...