CLICK TO PURCHASE
Baker Book House ║ Amazon
Barnes & Noble ║ Christianbook.com ║ iBooks
Kobo ║ Lifeway ║ Books-A-Million
What Texas Taught Me About Alabama
A Lone Star sojourn helped bring my native state into sharper focus.
Guest Post by Valerie Fraser Luesse
My family has lived in the same county in Alabama for four generations. They weren’t exactly thrilled when I announced that I was going to graduate school in Texas. I had never seen Texas. I had never toured Baylor. I just knew that I wanted to make something happen in my life. I wanted a change. So I responded to an ad for graduate assistantships, posted on the bulletin board in the English department at Auburn, and Dr. Thomas Goode called me to talk about coming to Waco.
Not long after that, I loaded everything I owned into a Ford Mercury Monarch (my prized possessions were a stereo and a teeny portable TV) and struck out across I-20 with Mama. Daddy and my grandmother came to get her later, leaving me with Texas and the Ford.
Here’s what I remember most about those first few months:
• Everybody who told me “It’s a dry heat so you won’t feel it” was wrong about Central Texas. I felt every one of those 107 degrees the day I arrived. I would eventually get cocky about the heat, calling home and saying things like, “Well, we’re having a cold snap out here—dipped down into the 90s yesterday.”
• There is no sky like a Texas sky. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of tree branches framed against it because I so wanted everybody back home to see what I was seeing. Of course, no picture that I could take would ever capture the enormity of a Texas sky or its singular shade of blue.
• Texans have a wonderful sense of humor about themselves. It makes them humble, proud, and unapologetic all at the same time. I grew to love that combination.
Over the years, I have met many people who expected me to apologize for Alabama’s past—and seemed convinced that nothing had changed in the decades since the Civil Rights Movement. Texas taught me not to accept that—not to allow anyone else to define me or the place I came from.
My time there also helped me see the uniqueness of Alabama and its people. I guess I thought everywhere was like home because I had never traveled beyond the Deep South and the Florida Panhandle. Spending a few years in Texas, which is a different universe from Alabama, gave me something to compare my home state to. And my new Southwestern friends helped me see how deep my Alabama roots really were.
I remember telling my friend Julie, “You know, I think I would feel like an alien anywhere but in the Deep South.” She laughed and said, “You’d feel like an alien anywhere but Alabama.” (That’s not entirely true. I’m good with Mississippi.)
Missing Isaac, over time, became the story of the complicated truth of Alabama. The violence broadcast on the nightly news during the 1960s was horrific, but it was only part of the story. In little towns like my fictional Glory, Alabama, ordinary people were fighting very private battles: Is everything I’ve believed about race, everything my parents taught me and everything I’ve taught my own children, wrong? And if the old way is wrong, then what’s right?
After I left Baylor, many years would pass before I was ready to delve into fiction writing. During that time, I got schooled in the art of feature writing by some incredible Southern Living storytellers, including Gary Ford and Les Thomas—both Texans—and Dianne Young, who grew up in Alabama but went to grad school at UT and never got over it. She wrote some of the most phenomenal stories of her career about the far reaches of West Texas, which she loves to this day.
Not to go all cowboy on you, but there’s something very straight-shooting about Texas storytellers that I find very appealing. And even the most serious moments will often be tinged with sly humor. I remember Les used to have a rule for young travel writers, who could get so caught up in waxing poetic that they forgot to include a key element: “Make ’em laugh, make ’em cry . . . tell ’em where it is.”
When one of my magazine friends read an early draft of Missing Isaac, she said it made her laugh one minute and cry the next. So maybe I did bring a touch of Texas back home to Alabama. I hope so.
Over a matter of years, darkness and doubt slowly crept in, leaving her unsure and unsettled in her life, marriage, and career. And after stalling out multiple times and nearly wrecking everything, she finally grabbed hold of a life-saving truth:
She had a choice to make. She could stay stuck, or she could try and find new roads that would lead to the peace and joy she was looking for.
With a glimmer of hope, Dena embraced the gifts of curiosity and grace and began a journey of self-discovery. And she chose to believe in a new truth:
She was meant for more and could no longer settle.
In Road to Hope, Dena invites you to join her as she wanders the roads she traveled and take anything you need from her story to help you in yours. She shares how she grew from a woman who doubted her path to one who is confident and ready for the next adventure. And she wants you to experience a similar shift. And more than that, she believes you can.
