Bryan Woolley – författare

The story of Sam Bass, both outlaw and romantic figure, has become a familiar part of Texas folldore and is well documented in nonfiction. But in this novel, Bryan Woolley creates a compelling story by giving the antihero fictional life. Woolley brings Bass alive through six alternating voices - Maude, the whore who was Bass's lover; Mary Matson; the African American who took him in and tended him as he lay dying; Dad Egan, the lawman who was once a father-figure to young Sam Bass but feels compelled to capture the outlaw, Frank Johnson, who rode with Bass but left the outlaw life to reappear as a small-town doctor; and Jim Murphy, the well-meaning saloonkeeper who makes a bargain with the law and brings down Sam Bass. In shaping the Bass story, Woolley explores the themes of youth and age, impulse and wisdom. An outlaw, for many of us, is not a villain or a criminal but someone who, by choice or circumstance, finds himself at odds with society. We see the outlaw life as one of carefree freedom without responsibilities and full of infinite possibilities. Frank Jackson says it best as he recalls riding with Sam Bass. ""I felt like an outlaw but not like a criminal, and the beauty of the day and its freedom filled me.

A compilation of author and journalist Bryan Woolley's The Dallas Morning News columns from 1999 through 2003, Texas Road Trip explores back roads, small towns and Texas originals. Follow him on his road trips across the Great State as he meets interesting people and heats fascinating, even bizarre, tales. As Woolley says, Texas Road Trip takes us beyond the "super highways spewing diesel smoke and danger to the sparsely traveled farm to market roads and the old highways that used to connect the little towns before the interstates bypassed them." Tinged with nostalgia for a bygone way of life, the essays acquaint us with the pleasure of drinking a Coca-Cola in a bottle that sports ice crystals ("Cold Drink") or a Comanche ceremony in Palo Duro Canyon to re-sanctify the canyon that was once sacred ("Quanah's People"). He also explores more personal terrain in such stories as "Boys," in which he recounts a trip he and his grown sons took in remembrance of their summer vacations in Fort Davis when the boys were young. Woolley's thoughtful take imbues each essay with a generosity of spirit and a real enthusiasm for his subjects. From the stars of the Davis Mountains to the sophistication of Austin and Dallas, Texas Road Trip is an homage to Texas - its history, people, and culture.

Fort Appleby, Texas, 1952—the small West Texas mountain town to which the people of Houston, El Paso and San Antonio flee to escape the dreaded polio epidemic. And then polio hits Fort Appleby, a frightening four cases in a town of 800. School is closed, and the people spend their time fighting fear and attending funerals.For senior football star Kevin Adams, 1952 is the year when his life is turned upside down by the epidemic and by the uncertainties that come of being seventeen and eager for all of life, from girls to football to great literature. Kevin struggles to sort out the many relationships in his life—there’s Jasper, his best buddy and the first polio victim; Rosa, the Mexican girl society forbids him to love, and her mother, Carmelita, who drives a strange bargain with Kevin; Jay Eisenbarger, the high school principal who sees in Kevin that rare pupil in whom education lights a spark; and Mary Beth Adams, his remote and distant mother.With careful attention to detail, Bryan Woolley draws you into several small worlds—that of a West Texas town, that of adolescence, and that of the pain and grief of loss. Time and Place is a sweet, sad, sometimes funny novel that deals with universal problems yet roots them deeply in West Texas, a regional novel in the best sense of the word.