Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse

by Jayme Lynn Blaschke

Thanks to the classic Dolly Parton film The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and ZZ Top's ode "La Grange," many people think they know the story of the infamous Chicken Ranch. The reality is more complex, lying somewhere between heartbreaking and absurd. For more than a century, dirt farmers and big-cigar politicians alike rubbed shoulders at the Chicken Ranch, operated openly under the sheriff's watchful eye. Madam Edna Milton and her girls ran a tight, discreet ship that the God-fearing people of La Grange tolerated if not outright embraced. That is, until a secret conspiracy enlisted an opportunistic reporter to bring it all crashing down on primetime television. Drawn from exclusive interviews and expanded with newly uncovered information, Jayme Lynn Blaschke's revelatory exposition of the Ranch illuminates the truth and lies surrounding this iconic brothel.

339 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 26, 2023

About the author

Jayme Lynn Blaschke is the author of Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse. The first edition was published in 2016, and the updated, revised and expanded 50th anniversary edition (observing the closure of the brothel) was published in 2023 (both from the History Press).

His fiction has appeared in Interzone, Fast Ships, Black Sails and Cross Plains Universe, among other places. He's the former fiction editor of RevolutionSF.com, and former media director for Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. A collected volume of his SF-themed interviews, Voices of Vision: Creators of Science Fiction and Fantasy Speak, is available from the University of Nebraska Press. Blaschke lives in New Braunfels, Texas.