With the sprawling celebration of Walt Whitman and the meditative concentration of Mary Oliver, Accidental Joy is more than a poetic monologue-it is a personal epic. It is private prayer and public performance in one. Sitting down to read it feels like you're taking in a good bottle of wine: the flavors, highlights, and notes are diverse and complex, but they nonetheless create a unified flavor, a cohesive and balanced whole. -Allyson Whipple, author of We're Smaller Than We Think We Are Judith Austin Mills is a poet who wins poetry contests, some with very formal requirements, but this...

A sweeping tale of 19th-century Texas...
Texas history on a broad, complex scale --Kirkus Reviews

When young Shelby Whitmire spies a flatboat coming down the Mississippi to Natchez, he doesn't know that two aboard are on the run to Mexico's Texas territory. How could the motherless boy foresee his adult years unfolding in that wilderness? After fiery speeches in 1835 convince others to help Texas win independence, it is friendship and heartbreak driving Shelby across the Sabine River and onto perilous trails. No survivor from the spring of revolution forgets the Alamo, but...