Texas

Framed by a contemporary task force reviewing how Texas history should be taught, the novel follows the ancestors of several families who enter the region from Spain, Mexico, Germany, the American South and the Indigenous world. Their stories encompass mission settlements, ranching, migration and the competing claims that eventually produce rebellion against Mexico.

Later generations experience the Texas Revolution, the republic, annexation, war with Mexico, the Civil War, cattle drives, oil and twentieth-century growth. The book presents Texas identity as a contested inheritance shaped by Tejano, Native, African American and immigrant communities as well as by the myths created around frontier independence.