Frances Brannen Vick – författare

Known as ""The Emerald City,"" Dallas has its own rich heritage peculiar to its founding on the prairies and the Trinity River, and editor Frances Brannen Vick has collected a cornucopia of all things ""Big D in Literary Dallas"", the third in TCU Press' ""literary cities"" series.There is C. C. Slaughter who helped make Dallas a banking center; John Rosenfield, who made his city a haven for performing arts; Evelyn Oppenheimer, who made her career reviewing books; not to mention Frank X. Tolbert, both Chili King and writer.Natalie Ornish writes of the merchants who made Dallas a city where haute couture is comme il faut, but, where, as Prudence Macintosh avers, it is also possible to live a perfectly happy life and never wear a ball gown.Historians and journalists have interpreted the city for generations, and you will find A. C. Greene, Bob Compton, Stanley Walker, Kent Biffle, Paul Crume and Jay Milner, among others.The pivotal event in Dallas was the Kennedy assassination, and Vick researched the journalists, writers, poets and observers who tackled this subject, including Jim Lehrer, Bryan Woolley, and Lawrence Wright, to name a few.Fiction set in Dallas has been wide and deep. Authors explore various backdrops, and from a Catholic church to an English manor to local bars - and all the places in between - Dallas is covered.

The matriarch of one of the most important families in Texas history, Petra Vela Kenedy has remained a shadowy presence in the annals of South Texas. In this biography of Petra Vela Kenedy, the authors not only tell her story but also relate the history of South Texas through a woman’s perspective. Utilizing previously unpublished letters, journals, photographs, and other primary materials, the authors reveal the intimate stories of the families who for years dominated governments, land acquisition, commerce, and border politics along the Rio Grande and across the Wild Horse Desert. From Petra’s early life in the landed ranchero society of northern Mexico, through her alliance with Luis Vidal—an officer in the Mexican army to whom she bore eight children—until her move to Brownsville after Vidal’s death, Petra lived in Mexico. When she moved to Texas, having taken Vidal’s name, she represented a link to the landed families of the region. Mifflin Kenedy, a steamboat captain who had first come to Texas during the Mexican War, married into her world, acquiring local respectability and stature when he took Petra as his wife. The story of their life together encompasses war, the taming of a frontier, the blending of cultures, the origin of a ranching empire, and the establishment of a foundation and trust that still endure today, giving millions to Texas through charitable gifts. An attractive woman of business acumen, strong religious convictions, and intense family loyalty, Petra Vela Kenedy’s influence through her husband and her children left a legacy whose exploration is long overdue.