Listen to this recent interview with Jackie Ellis Stewart. She tells Wendy Dewar Hughes and Suzanne Lieurance, cohorts of Creative Caravan Road Show, about her new memoir, Raiders and Horse Thieves: Memoir of a Central Texas Baby Boomer.
About the Book
“All the more desirable coastal land of the New World had been acquired by the 1840s and ‘50s.
The Scots-Irish entered this country through the Mid-Atlantic States rather than New England.
They settled first in Virginia and Maryland and then moved on to Kentucky and Virginia.
Some went further south from there, while others moved west.
Raiders and Horse Thieves is the story of my early childhood in Cedar Creek, Texas (Bastrop County), during the final days of World War II.
Due to Reconstruction and the Great Depression, economic growth in this central Texas County had been severely restricted.
The residents maintained the pioneer values and lived the lifestyle of a much earlier period.
This is a true story of the human will to persevere, against Nature and against one another.
I describe growing up in a ramshackle old house called The Holcomb Place, in Cedar Creek, Bastrop County.
All the elements of life in rural Texas are there: drought; storms; rattlesnakes; religion; guns. . . .” ~ Jackie Ellis Stewart
What People are Saying about Raiders and Horse Thieves
I picked up this little book on a busy weekend morning, intending to look at the fascinating pictures included with the text and then put the book aside for another time. I started reading and literally could not stop. The characters are fascinating and most made me both love them and hate them. I hope for a second book.
Every family has a story and Ms. Stewart surely has much to share. Makes the reader a voyeur into another life and place much as Jeannette Walls did in The Glass Castle. This is an eye opening and revealing story far removed from the “normal” life that we assume happens in other families.
I really enjoyed Raiders and Horse Thieves. It allowed me to see a wholly different world through a child’s eyes, and to recognize that her childhood, though quite unlike mine in many ways, was also much the same. I would guess that it will be the same happy experience for you.
A fascinating look at a complex family dynamic during a time and place often obscured by veiled memories and popular fiction. A time and tale that will resonate with many. A great read.
Like Jackie Ellis, I’m also a Baby Boomer. Of course, so are millions of us. But I enjoyed reading her memoir of what it was like growing up in Central Texas in the ‘50s, since that’s what I did. Only there’s a big difference between her childhood and mine, which is what makes her book an interesting read.”
Longtime Austin writer Mike Cox is an elected member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the author of 26 non-fiction books.t
Jackie Lee Ellis Stewart,born in Bastrop,Texas, was educated in the central Texas Public School System, at the University Of Texas At Austin,and at George Peabody College In Nashville.
Jackie married Jack Stewart in 1968. The couple has four children and four grandchildren and currently are living in a suburb of Memphis, with their better-than-standard-poodle George.
Jackie’s first book, Raiders & Horse Thieves: Memoir of a Central Texas Baby Boomer, is due for release later this month.
