Nathan is a rising political star being pressured to run a bid to unseat the current governor of Texas. He’s already in a relationship with a woman much better suited to be a politician’s wife, but he’s never met anyone like Leta. Could this feisty woman hold the key to his heart—and his future?
Praise for the Texas Gold Collection
Guest Post: It All Started With Mrs. Leazenby
By Kellie Coates Gilbert
My third grade teacher, Mrs. Leazenby, read to us after lunch recess to calm us down and prepare us for a few more hours of learning before the bus took us home.
She read Tom Sawyer – and the kid sitting behind me named Craig sat and poked his pencil into my back the entire time. I raised my hand and told and the teacher did nothing. She just gave him a stern look and kept reading.
A few weeks later, she read Little Women – and he tied my two pigtails together and thought he was funny. I told……nothing.
She read Mrs. Wiggs and the Cabbage Patch, and he kicked the legs of my desk the entire time. I told…..and again, nothing.
But then….
She read WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS, a story about a boy in the Ozarks who worked, saved and bought two hound dogs OLD DAN and LITTLE ANN. The boy worked diligently to train the dogs to hunt raccoons and in the process a deep love grew between Billy and his dogs.
One night, however, his dogs treed a mountain lion. Old Dan howled defiantly, and the mountain lion attacked. Billy was horrified, and with his axe he entered the fray, hoping to save his dogs, but they ended up having to save him. Eventually, they defeated the mountain lion, but Old Dan was badly wounded, and Billy soon found his intestines in a bush. The poor dog died the next day. Billy was heartbroken, and Little Ann lost the will to live, stopped eating, and died of starvation (and a broken heart) a few days later on Old Dan’s grave.
That scene shook the entire class to our core. Even mean, bratty Craig cried.
As an adult, I look back now and wonder if Mrs. Leazenby chose that story on purpose. She knew Craig’s dog sat outside our classroom waiting for him every day until the bell finally rang for us to go home.
STORIES HAVE A WAY OF CHANGING US WHEN THE STORY PULLS US IN ON AN EMOTIONAL LEVEL.
That is what drew me to books as a reader . . . and that is what thrills me about being a writer. Stories have the power to impact us at our core level like nothing else. I am who I am, in large part, because of the stories I read as a girl. How I view myself, what I dream of becoming, my compassion for others, was all molded by great fiction.
Kellie Coates Gilbert is a former legal investigator and trial paralegal, as well as the author of A Woman of Fortune, Where Rivers Part, and A Reason to Stay. Gilbert crafts her emotionally charged stories about women in life-changing circumstances in Dallas, Texas, where she lives with her husband.
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[…] week, I enjoyed reading about how stories change us on an emotional level. I know I’m never the same after reading a good […]
I loved reading this post by Kellie Gilbert since I can relate to it. The books I’ve read as a child and teenager help me become who I am today and I’m deeply grateful for that.
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