RaveThe Dallas Morning NewsDaugherty casts a fresh and insightful eye on Billy Lee as well as the politics and culture of America from the early 1950s until Brammer’s death at age 48 in 1978 ... Some of the best sections of Leaving the Gay Place concern how Brammer’s interactions with Johnson helped shape The Gay Place ... Daugherty uses snippets of Brammer’s unpublished prose, much of it brilliant, in his book ... Daugherty recounts Brammer’s saga and the times in which he lived in compelling fashion, which makes Leaving the Gay Place one of this year’s best nonfiction books about Texas.
Randy Kennedy
PositiveThe Dallas Morning NewsI\'ve often wondered about those squat cinderblock buildings situated next to broadcast towers that seem to reach into the sky for miles. Why are they there? What\'s inside? Who enters them? What secrets do they hold? Texas-born author Randy Kennedy must have spent considerable time speculating about the same thing. He conjures up an answer in his...first novel, Presidio: It\'s where you go to live when your wife has run off with all your money, the old family home has been repossessed and you have no other options ... it\'s to Kennedy\'s credit as a first-time novelist that he avoids sentimentality. His characters are flesh-and-blood real people. It\'s also to his credit that he avoids rendering them as chicken-fried clichés slavered with cream gravy.
Mark Ribowsky
PanThe Dallas Morning NewsUnfortunately, Ribowsky’s book falls far short of the mark. In general, Ribowsky seems out of his element in dealing with country music of the 1940s and ’50s and the forces that forged it. This gives Hank an awkward feel throughout ... To its credit, Hank is more complete in its collection of facts and quote snippets than any Williams biography before it ... Ribowsky gave it a try, but the big book about Hiram King 'Hank' Williams has yet to be penned.
