Surprise, Texas

An historical fiction, or a fictional history -- you decide which -- intended to be read aloud, this is a story about how we sometimes must become what we pretend to be. Set in the ephemeral village of Surprise in the hard-scrabble oil patch of Andrews County, Texas, Thom Ed Jones recounts the history of the place and its peoples, a tribe by choice living by design in obscurity, quartered in homes with wheels. Surprise, Texas is the sort of place you drive past as quickly as you can, though...