The students are back in school, and thanks to all of our generous donors we were able to help with school supplies for quite a few Dickens County children and teachers. If you are in need of school supplies please call or come by the library. We still have supplies and will continue helping out as much as we can.
Every once in a while an author will send the library a copy of their book. Recently we received a signed copy of “Our Peace: The Black History of Snyder, Texas 1914 – 1966” from the author, Jared Dennis.
A twenty-first century investigation of a twentieth century legacy, “Our Peace” tells a sweeping account of Scurry County’s African-American community from their journey across Texas during the Great Migration until the integration of the Snyder Independent School District. Pulled from the headlines of Snyder’s newspapers and set against a backdrop of the larger Black history of Texas, the story follows one resilient community’s struggle to create a home for themselves in the Jim Crow–era West.
Beginning with an explosive act of domestic terrorism and the subsequent cover-up, “Our Peace” chronicles the birth, growth, maturity, and alleged death of segregation from a distinctly West Texas point of view. Centered around the lives of church deacon John Baker, school principal Daniel Johnson, and Texas Governor Price Daniel, the story exposes the rise and fall of the Scurry County Ku Klux Klan, the division of Snyder into parallel societies, the foundations of local Black education and religion, the harrowing experiences of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl, the chaos of Snyder’s oil boom, the anxieties of school integration, and the origins of Scurry County’s Confederate monument.
By reading the reviews on the Amazon website, I believe this will be a great read for any local history buff.
New in large print, we have “Honey Drop Dead,” a Tea Shop Mystery by Laura Childs. The murder of a political bigwig at a Honey Bee Tea sends Theodosia Browning buzzing for answers in this latest installment of the New York Times
bestselling series.
Theodosia’s Honey Bee Tea was an elegant affair set in Charleston’s new Petigru Park amid newly planted native grasses and a community beekeeping project. But when a phony beekeeper shows up and sprays toxic smoke at the guests, the party erupts in chaos. Worse yet, a shot rings out and Osgood Claxton III, candidate for state legislature, falls to the ground—dead Also in large print we have “Judgement Prey” by John Sanford. Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers team up to crack an unsolvable case in this thrilling new novel. Alex Sand was spending the evening at home playing basketball with his two young sons when all three were shot in cold blood. A wealthy federal judge, there’s no short list of people who could have a vendetta against Sands, but the gruesome murders, especially that of his children, turn their St. Paul community on its head. Sand was on the verge of a major donation to a local housing charity, Heart/Twin Cities, and with the money in limbo, eyes suddenly turn to his grieving widow, Margaret Cooper, to see what she might do with the money. Margaret, distraught over the death of her family, struggles to move forward, and can’t imagine how or why anyone would target her husband. With public pressure mounting and both the local police force and FBI hitting dead end after dead end, Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers are called in to do what others could not: find answers. With each potential lead flawed, Davenport and Flowers are determined to chase every theory until they figure out who killed the Sands. But when they find themselves being stonewalled by the most unlikely of forces, the two wonder if perhaps each misdirection could lead them closer to the truth.
Check it out at the library.
Donnice Carruth is director of the Dickens County-Spur Library, in Spur.
