Review of Texas Books

Lareida Buckley’s novel gives us a first-view account of a rural, small-town Texas girl growing up under the watchful eye of her mother and her father, the local sheriff. The author cleverly portrays a vivid coming-of-age, describing what it was like growing up as the sheriff’s daughter through Dolly, the main character of the story.

Dolly, her two brothers Walter and Bill, and their parents live directly next to the jail during her middle childhood through young adult years as her father serves multiple terms as sheriff of the town. Dolly narrates candid stories of encounters she has with prisoners in the jail and her somewhat naïve insights on why they ended up in the trouble—as well as what eventually becomes of the “criminals” after their release. She also tells us about her mother, who works as jail cook, custodian, and dispatcher for the sheriff’s department and yearns for a different home and a more protective, peaceful environment in which to raise her children.

Dolly spends much of her childhood daydreaming about what it would be like to travel and has fantasies about the wonderful life of a roustabout. Always yearning for a life away from her small rural community and having dreams of traveling the world, Dolly goes on a backpacking trip in Europe during college and unfortunately loses her beloved father while she is away. Throughout the book, it is evident that Dolly adores her father and admires his actions when dealing with the prisoners, leaving her very proud of the way he has served their small community. She returns and remains there, taking a position as a social worker and resigning herself to the fact that this is where she should have been all along. Buckley’s tender, earthly, and comical first-person novel gives us a glimpse of small-town Texas life and the trials and tribulations of growing up there.