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.

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.

This third collection of true stories from award-winning journalist and novelist Bryan Woolley with an introduction by author John Nichols includes the deeply moving title story "Generations," as well as his features and personality profiles from The Dallas Morning News. In this volume of twenty-seven pieces, including the winner of a 1995 Missouri Lifestyles Journalism Award, "Poets Lariat," Woolley explores Dashiell Hammett''s San Francisco and recalls the lost golden age of Mineral Wells, Texas. He returns to the site of a mysterious 1947 crash, believed to be that of a UFO in Roswell, New Mexico. He meets such people as musician and mystery writer Kinky Friedman, talks to residents of Alpine, Texas, about their famous new neighbor, Robert James Waller, author of Bridges of Madison County, and mourns the retirement of cartoonist Gary Larson.

Best Western Historical Novel--Western Writers of AmericaBryan Woolley creates a compelling story giving antihero Sam Bass a fictional life, bringing him alive through six alternating voices--Maude, the whore who was Bass'' 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 bring down 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.

First published in 1973, Some Sweet Day is the story of the Turnbolt family in 1944, as told by six year old Gatewood Turnbolt, the eldest son. His relationship with his father, Will Turnbolt, a volatile, sometimes violent man, is a combination of wariness and love."It is an evocative, painful and lovely book that captures the immediacy and bewilderment of a child facing harsh imponderables for the first time."—Publishers Weekly"Without wasting a well-chosen word, Mr. Woolley fills in family ties, relationships with neighbors, the tone of the country. He suggests a raison d'' être for Will''s bitterness if not for his brutality. And he gets it all together in a commanding novel of childhood that surges with life." --New York Times Book Review

A new collection of "true Texas stories" to stand alongside his earlier collection, The Edge of the West and Other Texas Stories, including such portrayals of Texas and Texans as:--The title story on his own family scandal about his uncle being charged with the murder of his new bride;--The quest for the $65,000 prize fish in the Lake Texoma Crappiethon; and 17 other stories.