This gorgeous cover painting is by Clemente Guzman. The Texas Book Festival honored Clemente Guzman as its 2021 Poster Artist.
Viva Texas Rivers!
Edited by Steven L. Davis and Sam L. Pfiester
Afterword by Andrew Sansom
A sparkling new literary anthology celebrates the flowing bonds between Texas rivers and writers.
Viva Texas Rivers! Adventures, Misadventures, and Glimpses of Nirvana along Our Storied Waterways collects treasured writings by many of the state’s leading authors. The book is graced by literary luminaries Carmen Tafolla, Sandra Cisneros, John Graves, Stephen Harrigan, Naomi Shihab Nye, Joe Nick Patoski, Benjamín Alire Sáenz, Pat Mora, Bill Minutaglio, Joe R. Lansdale, Paulette Jiles, Attica Locke, S.C. Gwynne, Américo Paredes, and many more notables.
Ranging from the desert canyonlands of the Río Grande to the swampy Big Thicket, from crystal clear Hill Country streams to the Red River’s treacherous quicksand, Viva Texas Rivers! showcases many classic writings along with brand new essays written especially for this volume. The literary nonfiction is complemented by flashes of poetry that brilliantly reflect these curving ribbons of light.
The contemporary accounts are interspersed with selected historical nuggets: dispatches from Spanish explorers, John James Audubon’s early glimpse of Buffalo Bayou, and a 19th century view of the Comal River’s “unexcelled” beauty in New Braunfels.
Authoritative and expertly edited, Viva Texas Rivers! offers shimmering accounts of hidden paradises, as well as searing exposés of abuse and despoliation. Yet even in the bleakest times, as these acclaimed writers have found, Texas rivers can bestow a sacred grace — and unexpected redemption.
Viva Texas Rivers! brings you as close to the living nirvana of a Texas River as you can get without launching yourself into a canoe and following a great blue heron as it glides just above the breaking rapids, leading you around the bend as the river flows onward toward the best places in our hearts.
Viva Texas Rivers! is published by Texas A&M University Press in a unique partnership with Texas State University’s Wittliff Collections Literary Book Series and the Meadows Center River Books Series.
The anthology’s co-editors are Steven L. Davis and Sam L. Pfiester, who share deep connections to Texas rivers and the state’s literary scene. Davis is the longtime literary curator at the Wittliff and an award-winning author who has received the PEN Center Prize for Research Nonfiction. Pfiester, who chairs the Wittliff’s Advisory Council, has authored four novels and in 2018 created the hit indie movie, Blanche, set in Alpine, Texas.
Accompanying the book is a stellar new exhibition at the Wittliff Collections that features 58 contributors to Viva Texas Rivers!
Praise for Viva Texas Rivers!
“As these poignant and personal reflections from so many of the state’s great writers reveal, the rivers of Texas, deep or shallow, in eddying pools or raging torrents, can carry a reader through any journey of geography or the imagination, all the long distance to the sea.”
— Elizabeth Crook, acclaimed author of The Which Way Tree
“Davis and Pfiester have assembled a terrific collection of essays, histories, poems, celebrations, lamentations and personal recollections of Texas rivers. See and experience what explorers, kayakers, and the people who live nearby have discovered. Like polished river stones, each entry is a gem.”
— Severo Perez, award-winning filmmaker and author
“This unique and remarkable book reveals an amazing array of our state’s best writing on Texas Rivers. It stretched my imagination and made me yearn to go find many of these incredible places, to try to feel the mystery and allure and sometimes wild terror that is still there, in the 21st century, if a soul is brave enough and curious enough to follow the clues.”
— Thomas Zigal, prize-winning author of Many Rivers to Cross
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
Steven L. Davis & Sam L. Pfiester
BENEDICTION
Carmen Tafolla, This River Here
EAST TEXAS
The Sabine River
Gerald Duff, from Blue Sabine
Wes Ferguson, The Lost Sabine
Joe Lansdale, Where the River Flows
The Neches River
Richard M. Donovan, from Paddling the Wild Neches
Geraldine Ellis Watson, from Reflections on the Neches
Francis Edward Abernethy, The Flow of the Neches
Thad Sitton, The Enduring Neches
Village Creek
Gordon Baxter, Village Creek
The Trinity River
Mark Busby, from The Trinity, a Memory, Spring 1930
T-Bone Walker, from “Trinity River Blues”
Gary Cartwright, Holy Trinity
Buffalo Bayou
John James Audubon, on Buffalo Bayou, 1837
Attica Locke, from Black Water Rising
Michael Berryhill, Buffalo Bayou: The Soul of a City
CENTRAL TEXAS
Elroy Bode, Along the River
The Brazos River
Ruthie Foster, from “Home”
John Graves, Drifting Down the Brazos
Walter McDonald, Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos
James Hoggard, November
Gardner Smith with Robert Reitz, from The Cruise of the Red Turtle: A Brazos River Sketchbook
Chip Dameron, Drinking from the River
The Leon River
Leon Hale, The Bluff
W.K. Stratton, The Leon
The San Gabriel River
Alan Birkelbach, Walking the San Gabriel during the Drought
The Colorado River
Fray Gaspar José de Solís, on the Colorado River, 1768
Billy Lee Brammer, from The Gay Place
Margie Crisp, Colorado Bend
Carol Flake Chapman, The Texas River That Masquerades as a Lake
Brad Tyer, Going with the Flow
The Llano River
Bill Minutaglio, The Llano River
The Pedernales River
Deborah K. Wilson, Light on the Water
Daniel Oppenheimer, Angularities of a Creek: Observations from the Pedernales River Basin
Barton Springs
Stephen Harrigan, At the Source
The Guadalupe River
Butch Hancock, from “Banks of the Guadalupe”
Joe Nick Patoski, Guad Is Great: In Praise of the Guadalupe
Wayne H. McAlister, Paddling the Guadalupe: Canyon Lake to New Braunfels
James Hoggard, In the Rapids: Guadalupe River
The Blanco River
Wes Ferguson, The Blanco River
Naomi Shihab Nye, Little Blanco River
The Comal River
Isidro Félix de Espinosa, on the Comal River, 1716
Ferdinand von Roemer, from Texas
Patnarain, The Comal River
The San Marcos River
Stephen Harrigan, The Perfect River
The Sabinal River
Gardner Smith with Robert Reitz, The Clear Sabinal
The Frio River
Andrew Geyer, Things Water Whispers to Limestone
NORTH TEXAS
The Red River
Robert Flynn, from North to Yesterday
Jan Reid, The Meanest River
The Washita River
Karla K. Morton, Washita River
The Wichita River
William Hauptman, The Falls Return to Wichita Falls
The Canadian River
John Erickson, from Through Time and the Valley
Joe Holley, The Canadian River
INTERLUDE
Michael Barnes and Joe Starr, Half-Forgotten Rivers: The James and the Pease
WEST TEXAS
Río Grande / Río Bravo
Stephen Powers, on the Río Grande, 1871
Pat Mora, from Encantado: Desert Monologues
Bobby Byrd and Sasha Pimentel, And the River Runs Through
Pat Mora, El Río Grande
Beatriz Terrazas, The River That Runs through Me
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, The Ninth Dream: War (in the City in Which I Live)
Bobby Byrd, Early Morning, Front Porch—El Paso, Texas
Octavio Solis, Jeep in the Water
Pat Mora, A River of Women
Sasha von Oldershausen, Monsoon Season
Robert T. Hill, Running the Cañons of the Río Grande
Sandra Lynn, “The Big River Is Kept in a Stone Box”
Edwin “Bud” Shrake, Rafting the Big Bend
The Pecos River
Ruth Galloway Shackleford, on the Pecos River, 1868
J. Frank Dobie, from Coronado’s Children: Tales of Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of the Southwest
Larry McMurtry, from In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas, 1968
Suzanne O’Bryan, Thoughts along the River
Andrew Sansom, The Pecos: River of Misery and Mythology
S.C. Gwynne, The Lost River of Divine Reincarnation
The Upper Colorado River
Margie Crisp, Headwaters of the Colorado and Colorado City
The Concho River
Elmer Kelton, from Sandhills Boy: The Winding Trail of a Texas Writer
Larry D. Thomas, Concho River
The Devil’s River
Joe Nick Patoski, The Devils River: Undammed and Unforgiving
SOUTH TEXAS
The San Antonio River
Domingo Terán de los Rios, on the San Antonio River, 1691
Frederick Law Olmsted, from A Journey through Texas, or, A Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier
Carmen Tafolla, River Music
John Phillip Santos, The Mythic Narrative of San Pedro Creek
Alexis Harte, San Antonio: A City Guided by Its River
Sandra Cisneros, My Home along the San Antonio River
The Lower Guadalupe River
Clayton Maxwell, A Return to the River: The Lower Guadalupe
Michael Berryhill, Where the River Meets the Bay
The Nueces River
Alonso de León, on the Nueces River, 1691
Paulette Jiles, from Simon the Fiddler: A Novel
William Jack Sibley, The Nueces River
The Lower Río Grande
Emmy Pérez, from With the River on Our Face
David Bowles, “The Refuge on the Ranch”
Norma Elia Cantú, Hablando y Soñando
Norma Elia Cantú, Talking Dreaming
Keith Bowden—from The Tecate Journals: Seventy Days on the Río Grande
Jan Seale, The Roma Bluffs: Still Life with Folk
David Bowles, Border Kid
Domingo Martínez, The Betrayal
Jan Reid, The End of the River
Américo Paredes, El Río Bravo / The Río Grande
BENEDICTION
Pat Mora, The River
AFTERWORD
The State of Texas Rivers Today, by Andrew Sansom