Today my guest is award-winning author, Judy Alter.
Judy Alter is the author of six books in the Kelly O’Connell Mysteries, two books in the Blue Plate Café Mysteries; and two in the Oak Grove Mysteries. Pigface and the Perfect Dog follows The Perfect Coed in this series of mysteries set on a university campus. Judy is no stranger to college campuses. She attended the University of Chicago, Truman State University in Missouri, and Texas Christian University, where she earned a Ph.D. and taught English. For twenty years, she was director of TCU Press, the book publishing program of the university. The author of many books for both children and adults primarily on women of the American West, she retired in 2010 and turned her attention to writing contemporary cozy mysteries.
She holds awards from the Western Writers of America, the National Cowboy Museum and Hall of Fame, and the Texas Institute of Letters. She was inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame and recognized as an Outstanding Woman of Fort Worth and a woman who has left her mark on Texas. Western Writers of America gave her the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement and will induct her into its Hall of Fame in June 2015.
The single parent of four and the grandmother of seven, she lives in Fort Worth, Texas, with her perfect dog, Sophie.
What’s Worth Saving in Wheeler, Texas?
Historic preservation is the art or practice of preserving and protecting buildings or objects of historic significance. In the United Kingdom where it’s called Heritage Preservation, there are cathedrals and other structures hundreds of years old, surely worthy of protection.
In this country, preservation is complicated. We are a young country, with fewer buildings of historic significance. In addition many of our buildings were not built of permanent materials. It’s difficult to raise enthusiasm for preserving a deteriorating structure. This becomes more true the farther west you go, as our civilization moved from east to west.
Still most major cities have preservation organizations. They used to be called Historic Preservation Societies, but today the word society has an unwelcome elitist connotation. Now those organizations tend to have names like Preservation Fort Worth. Our history being shorter, the focus is on building primarily from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Texas, where I live preservation usually means nineteenth century. We have few buildings whose history dates back before 1800. Perhaps the most significant site in Texas has been the most controversial: the revered Alamo. New wars have almost been fought, primarily between women, on how to care for the remains of that famous mission.
A preservation problem unique to the United States is the urban development, in which historic structures are often swallowed up in the rush to “modernize” urban areas, putting more buildings and more occupancy per square mile, creating new areas to attract modern residents and consumers. One of the plans once proposed for the Alamo (and perhaps still on the table in some form) would turn it into a Disney-like attraction.
In Fort Worth, where I live, we had several blocks of early-twentieth-century cattle baron mansion, lavish, European-influenced homes built by cattle barons and oil tycoons, mostly from West Texas, to showcase their prosperous business ventures, often their rise in the world from poor cowboy or oil-field roustabout to wealthy baron. Today most of those homes have been replaced by office buildings, but two remain, authentically furnished and open to the public. They epitomize preservation at its best, though far too many structures have been lost.
All of this leads to the question of what is worth preserving in a small, rural town in East Texas, population maybe 3,000, history dating maybe to the early twentieth century? In Murder at the Bus Depot, Kate Chambers realizes that half the town wants to demolish the old bus depot, now unused, because it is an eyesore on the main street; the other half swears it should be preserved, partly because it was the site of an unsolved murder thirty years ago. Mayor Tom Bryon points out the most significant reason for saving it: the old depot, tiny as it is, represents a way of life now gone. Buses no longer run from small towns to Dallas to the west, and the depot is a symbol of the past. He further argues that fifties-style ranch houses are also worthy of preservation, because they too signify a way of life and are no longer being built.
So Historic Wheeler is born. It proves a cohesive element in the town—well, Kate’s sister Donna is against it, but she is rarely enthusiastic about anything but her B&B (in a historic farmhouse). To make money to move and save the depot, the group plans a raffle—and that ultimately leads Kate into danger and the final unraveling of the mystery.
My ✰✰✰✰✰ Review
When a developer comes to Wheeler, Texas and threatens changes, Kate Chambers, owner of the Blue Plate Cafe, along with some of the others in town, decide to form a preservation society to keep the town just as it is, thus preserving it as an “authentic” small town. But what makes it different from any other small town is that Wheeler has an old, dilapidated bus depot, the site of an unsolved murder.
In order to raise money. the society decides to hold a raffle, with the prize being a gourmet dinner for two, cooked by Kate Chambers, at the newly restored bus depot, which volunteers would help to repair, paint, and decorate. Just as the project is getting underway, there’s another murder. Is the current crime and the old unsolved murder somehow connected? Will Kate be the next victim? You’ll have to read the book to find out.
This is the second Blue Plate Cafe Mystery I’ve read, so I’m familiar with the main characters whom I really like, and I enjoyed this mystery as much as I did the first.
Follow her at (Amazon) http://www.amazon.com/Judy-Alter/e/B001H6NMU6/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1377217817&sr=1-2-ent;
her blog: http://www.judys-stew.blogspot.com;
and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Judy-Alter-Author/366948676705857
Buy link for Pigface and the Perfect Dog:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073VSDKMH/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499795957&sr=8-1&keywords=Pigface+and+the+Perfect+Dog
Buy link for The Color of Fear:
https://www.amazon.com/Color-Fear-OConnell-Mystery-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B0714CLJ1L/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498930807&sr=8-1&keywords=the+color+of+fear+alter
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