Gamble in The Devil's Chalk

by Caleb Pirtle III

Overview

In the mid 1970s, a band of men with little expertise in the oilfield defied the hard ground of Giddings, Texas, to search for oil in a barren, poverty-stricken land that was littered with dry holes, shattered hopes, and empty pockets. Max Williams, the former hot-shot basketball player at SMU, and Irv Deal had been in high-dollar real estate until the real estate market collapsed. Both were facing the wrath of hard times. Pat Holloway was a lawyer who operated drilling funds but had never tested the ill-fated Austin Chalk. He drilled the most and earned the most but lost it all in the shady confines of a Dallas courtroom. Jimmy Luecke was a highway patrolman who stopped Holloway for speeding one night and promised not to take him to jail if the lawyer/oilman would agree to drill on his family's land. Bill Shuford was right out of college and more interested in finding the next beer joint than his next job. Jim Dobos was a constable who used his badge to lease land, struck it rich, and was found with a gunshot in his head. Was it murder or suicide? Clayton Williams was the only big-time oilman in the bunch, but in the beginning, he made the mistake of employing the wrong geologist. Only those who used the geologic genius of Ray Holifield found oil. Holifield had cracked the code of the chalk. Gamble in the Devil's Chalk is the true story of their fights, their feuds, their trials, their tribulations, and their triumphs as they discovered the second largest oilfield in the United States during the past half century. Once they came, Giddings would never be the same again.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940012589132
Publisher:	eBookIt.com
Publication date:	05/25/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	704 KB

About the Author

Caleb Pirtle III was an award winning feature writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, served for a decade as travel editor for Southern Living Magazine, and has authored more than fifty-five published books.

Through the years, Pirtle has distinguished himself with focusing on the human side of a story, especially history and non-fiction. He has long believed, "What happens is never as important as the people who make it happen." Among his historical books are XIT: The American Cowboy, The Texas Outback, Deep Roots, Echoes from Forgotten Streets, Visions of Forgotten Streets, Engineering the World, Impact, and Trail of Broken Promises.

A graduate from The University of Texas with a journalism degree, Pirtle won the William Randolph Hearst Award for feature writing, and he received numerous Associated Press and Headliner's Awards for his work at the Star-Telegram. For Southern Living Magazine, his travel and historical writing won the Discover America Awards three times.

His award-winning books include The Unending Season, XIT: The American Cowboy, The Grandest Day, Spirit of A Winner, and Echoes from Forgotten Streets.

Pirtle served for more than twenty years as editorial director for Dockery House Publishing, creating and developing books and magazines for national corporate and retail customers.

Pirtle, with writing partner Frank Q. Dobbs, wrote the teleplays for the CBS mini-series Gambler V: Playing for Keeps, starring Kenny Rogers, Dixie Carter, Lonnie Anderson, and Mariska Hargitay, and the TNT television movie, The Texas Rangers, starring Tom Berenger.