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The Kings of Big Spring: God, Oil, and One Family's Search for the American Dream
A saga of family, fortune, faith in Texas, where blood is bond and oil is king…
In 1892, Bryan Mealer’s great-grandfather leaves the Georgia mountains and heads west into Texas, looking for wealth and adventure in the raw and open country. But his luck soon runs out. Beset by drought, the family loses their farm just as the dead pastures around them give way to one of the biggest oil booms in American history. They eventually settle in the small town of Big Spring, where fast fortunes are being made from its own reserves of oil. For the next two generations, the Mealers live on the margins of poverty, laboring in the cotton fields and on the drilling rigs that sprout along the flatland, weathering dust and wind, booms and busts, and tragedies that scatter them like tumbleweed. After embracing Pentecostalism during the Great Depression, they rely heavily on their faith to steel them against hardship and despair. But for young Bobby Mealer, the author’s father, religion is only an agent for rebellion.
In the winter of 1981, when the author is seven years old, Bobby receives a call from an old friend with a simple question, “How'd you like to be a millionaire?”
Twenty-six, and with a wife and three kids, Bobby had left his hometown to seek a life removed from the blowing dust and oil fields, and to find spiritual peace. But now Big Spring’s streets are flooded again with roughnecks, money, and sin. Boom chasers pour in from the busted factory towns in the north. Drilling rigs rise like timber along the pastures, and poor men become millionaires overnight.
Grady Cunningham, Bobby's friend, is one of the newly-minted kings of Big Spring. Loud and flamboyant, with a penchant for floor-length fur coats, Grady pulls Bobby and his young wife into his glamorous orbit. While drilling wells for Grady's oil company, they fly around on private jets and embrace the honky-tonk high life of Texas oilmen. But beneath the Rolexes and Rolls Royce cars is a reality as dark as the crude itself. As Bobby soon discovers, his return to Big Spring is a backslider’s journey into a spiritual wilderness, and one that could cost him his life.
A masterwork of memoir and narrative history, The Kings of Big Spring is an indelible portrait of fortune and ruin as big as Texas itself. And in telling the story of four generations of his family, Mealer also tells the story of America came to be.
In 1892, Bryan Mealer’s great-grandfather leaves the Georgia mountains and heads west into Texas, looking for wealth and adventure in the raw and open country. But his luck soon runs out. Beset by drought, the family loses their farm just as the dead pastures around them give way to one of the biggest oil booms in American history. They eventually settle in the small town of Big Spring, where fast fortunes are being made from its own reserves of oil. For the next two generations, the Mealers live on the margins of poverty, laboring in the cotton fields and on the drilling rigs that sprout along the flatland, weathering dust and wind, booms and busts, and tragedies that scatter them like tumbleweed. After embracing Pentecostalism during the Great Depression, they rely heavily on their faith to steel them against hardship and despair. But for young Bobby Mealer, the author’s father, religion is only an agent for rebellion.
In the winter of 1981, when the author is seven years old, Bobby receives a call from an old friend with a simple question, “How'd you like to be a millionaire?”
Twenty-six, and with a wife and three kids, Bobby had left his hometown to seek a life removed from the blowing dust and oil fields, and to find spiritual peace. But now Big Spring’s streets are flooded again with roughnecks, money, and sin. Boom chasers pour in from the busted factory towns in the north. Drilling rigs rise like timber along the pastures, and poor men become millionaires overnight.
Grady Cunningham, Bobby's friend, is one of the newly-minted kings of Big Spring. Loud and flamboyant, with a penchant for floor-length fur coats, Grady pulls Bobby and his young wife into his glamorous orbit. While drilling wells for Grady's oil company, they fly around on private jets and embrace the honky-tonk high life of Texas oilmen. But beneath the Rolexes and Rolls Royce cars is a reality as dark as the crude itself. As Bobby soon discovers, his return to Big Spring is a backslider’s journey into a spiritual wilderness, and one that could cost him his life.
A masterwork of memoir and narrative history, The Kings of Big Spring is an indelible portrait of fortune and ruin as big as Texas itself. And in telling the story of four generations of his family, Mealer also tells the story of America came to be.
373 pages, Hardcover
First published February 6, 2018
97 people are currently reading
1259 people want to read
About the author
Bryan Mealer
8 books26 followersBryan Mealer is the author of Muck City: Winning and Losing in Football’s Forgotten Town and the New York Times bestseller The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which he wrote with William Kamkwamba, in addition to the children’s book of the same title. He’s also the author of All Things Must Fight to Live, which chronicled his years covering the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo for Harper’s and the Associated Press. His work has appeared in the anthology Best American Travel Writing and was chosen for an Overseas Press Club Award Citation. He and his family live in Austin, Texas.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews
August 1, 2020
The Kings of Big Spring is a work of art chronicling a bygone era in Texas. Mealer’s family history woven in with the history of oil discovery in Texas results in a fabulous book that reads like fiction. Propped up by and relying heavily on religion and fortitude, his family withstands more hard times than any one family deserves. Spanning four generations, the Mealer family survives World War 1, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, the oil boom, a terrible drought, and countless other heartbreaks. Mealer’s family tales are fascinating – he details life in the towns impacted by the discovery of oil, the heyday of Big Spring with its ornate and opulent Hotel Settles, the oil boom and its impact on individuals, and the daily life of those living on or under the poverty line.
Mealer’s style of writing is perfect for this book. He deftly portrays his characters and settings with such incredible detail; I could envision the towns and the people he was writing about clearly. One of my favorite parts of the book was the inclusion of various famous people such as Larry Gatlin, Roy Orbison, and Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, including a fair amount of interesting history on Wills’ group. I chuckled when Mealer describes his extremely religious grandmother’s excitement to be cast in a small background role in a movie filmed in Texas (Midnight Cowboy) only to discover upon the movie’s release that it is rated X and covers subject matter about which she deeply disapproves. I was startled to read about Tropical Storm Claudette, a huge storm that ravaged the Houston area in 1979 (we lived abroad from 1976-1980 so I was not in Houston at the time). Having just withstood Hurricane Harvey several months ago, I was amazed to read about a storm that sounded so eerily familiar.
While I have spent some time in West Texas, I had never heard of Big Spring until I read this book. I look forward to stopping there on my next trip through that region to see in person the town at the heart of this tale. I was thankful that there is a family tree at the front of the book because there are so many characters. I found myself frequently consulting the two-page chart to refresh my memory on the identity of a particular individual and his/her relationship within the Mealer family. The chart was a great addition and extremely helpful.
I loved The Kings of Big Spring and highly recommend it.
Listen to my podcast at https://www.thoughtsfromapage.com for fun author interviews. For more book reviews, check out my Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/thoughtsfro....
Mealer’s style of writing is perfect for this book. He deftly portrays his characters and settings with such incredible detail; I could envision the towns and the people he was writing about clearly. One of my favorite parts of the book was the inclusion of various famous people such as Larry Gatlin, Roy Orbison, and Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, including a fair amount of interesting history on Wills’ group. I chuckled when Mealer describes his extremely religious grandmother’s excitement to be cast in a small background role in a movie filmed in Texas (Midnight Cowboy) only to discover upon the movie’s release that it is rated X and covers subject matter about which she deeply disapproves. I was startled to read about Tropical Storm Claudette, a huge storm that ravaged the Houston area in 1979 (we lived abroad from 1976-1980 so I was not in Houston at the time). Having just withstood Hurricane Harvey several months ago, I was amazed to read about a storm that sounded so eerily familiar.
While I have spent some time in West Texas, I had never heard of Big Spring until I read this book. I look forward to stopping there on my next trip through that region to see in person the town at the heart of this tale. I was thankful that there is a family tree at the front of the book because there are so many characters. I found myself frequently consulting the two-page chart to refresh my memory on the identity of a particular individual and his/her relationship within the Mealer family. The chart was a great addition and extremely helpful.
I loved The Kings of Big Spring and highly recommend it.
Listen to my podcast at https://www.thoughtsfromapage.com for fun author interviews. For more book reviews, check out my Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/thoughtsfro....
March 10, 2018
"Only in Texas was there enough space for so many second acts.” – Bryan Mealer, The Kings of Big Spring
The subtitle of Bryan Mealer’s book, God, Oil, and One Family’s Search for the American Dream, is much more descriptive of this book than is the main title, The Kings of Big Spring. For while we do meet three kings (oil tycoons) of Big Spring, his main emphasis is on four generations of his family’s mostly unsuccessful search for the American Dream.
“… the whole book is a roller-coaster of hope and despair.” – Don Graham, Dallas News
DEPRESSION
Mealer’s account gets underway with the story of his paternal great-grandfather’s migration from the Appalachian foothills of Georgia to east Texas in 1892 in search of that elusive American Dream. He set about doing what he knew best which was cotton farming. Unfortunately, he arrived at about the same time as another arrival: an economic depression brought on by the collapse of several northern railroads.
The depression resulted in east Texas farmers becoming tenants who found themselves renting the very land that they had once owned.
BOLL WEEVIL
In 1907, east Texas was devastated by another arrival. This time it was an insect that had migrated out of Mexico, destroying the cotton economy in the historical Cotton Belt in the southeastern United States, before eventually making its way into east Texas.
Mealer writes that “Farmers spoke of the boll weevil in reverent tones, while bluesmen honored them with ballads the way they did the Devil and loose women.”
DROUGHT AND DEATH
To escape the weevil, the Mealers moved to west Texas where the insect had not learned to survive the colder winters. The land was fertile, but the rainfall was uncertain and in 1915 drought caused the crops to fail and the family was forced to move and drift from one job to another.
The next year, Mealer’s great-grandmother succumbed to the Spanish flu outbreak.
DEPRESSION, DROUGHT, AND DUST BOWL
The stock market collapse in 1929 triggered the Great Depression, which was followed by drought and dust storms and the Dust Bowl that blanketed the plains states.
“A storm in late February,” writes Mealer, “lasted four days. It arrived from the Dakotas in front of seventy-mile-an-hour winds, blocking the sun. On the third day, it mixed with a blizzard in a freak circus of nature that few residents had ever seen. On March 22, the dust was so blinding that cowboys on the Guitar Ranch lost six hundred head of cattle they were driving through the shinnery [dense shrubbery].”
DROUGHT REDUX
Economic conditions in west Texas improved during the post-WWII era, of course. However, there were still major bumps in the prosperity road. In 1950, there began in Texas an epic and unprecedented drought, one that eventually covered ten plains states, surpassing all recorded droughts, including the Dust Bowl years. It was described by experts as the most devastating drought in 600 years.
The effects of the drought were greater in Texas than in any other state. There was no measurable rainfall for seven years. Elmer Kelton wrote in his classic novel, The Time It Never Rained, that it was a time when “many a boy would become a man before the land was green again.”
By the end of the decade Texas lost nearly a hundred thousand farms and ranches.
OIL
Because of the vulnerability of cotton cultivation to both economic downswings and natural calamities, some members of Mealer’s family took jobs in and around the communities of Midland, Odessa, and, especially, Big Spring, either in the oil fields or in enterprises related to oil production. This didn’t entirely solve their problems for the oil markets, subject to fluctuating demand and Middle Eastern competition, especially after the founding of the OPEC cartel, were almost as volatile as the cotton market, and the boom and bust nature of the industry set them adrift as they sought the means to support their families.
GOD
Don Graham wrote in his review of the book in the Dallas Times:
The Mealer families worked hard and played hard, and through it all, they counted on religion to keep them on the straight and narrow. What sustained them throughout was that old-time religion …. Their church of choice was the Assembly of God, which had rules so strict that they didn’t even allow their children to play football or attend football games.
Mealer contrasted his family’s church with that of their southern Baptist neighbors:
The Baptists down the road believed that once a person accepted Christ and was cleansed by his blood, their ticket to heaven was guaranteed. But not the members of the Assemblies of God, who in those days believed that even the slightest blemish of sin carried the whole weight of damnation. Each tiny transgression had to be reckoned with and expunged.
Practically every reviewer refers to the book as a “sprawling family saga,” and it is that for sure. It is the history of four generations over the course of more than a century. Fortunately, the author includes two family trees that help the reader to sort out the members of the large family.
But it is more than a family saga. It is also a history of twentieth century Texas, with an emphasis on the economic and natural calamities that made life so difficult for that family and so many others.
--------
“A masterwork of memoir and narrative history. ‘The King of Big Spring’ is an indelible portrait of fortune and ruin as big as Texas itself. And in telling the story of four generations of his family, Mealer also tells the story of how America came to be.” – Barbara Bamberger Scott, Bookreporter.com
The subtitle of Bryan Mealer’s book, God, Oil, and One Family’s Search for the American Dream, is much more descriptive of this book than is the main title, The Kings of Big Spring. For while we do meet three kings (oil tycoons) of Big Spring, his main emphasis is on four generations of his family’s mostly unsuccessful search for the American Dream.
“… the whole book is a roller-coaster of hope and despair.” – Don Graham, Dallas News
DEPRESSION
Mealer’s account gets underway with the story of his paternal great-grandfather’s migration from the Appalachian foothills of Georgia to east Texas in 1892 in search of that elusive American Dream. He set about doing what he knew best which was cotton farming. Unfortunately, he arrived at about the same time as another arrival: an economic depression brought on by the collapse of several northern railroads.
The depression resulted in east Texas farmers becoming tenants who found themselves renting the very land that they had once owned.
BOLL WEEVIL
In 1907, east Texas was devastated by another arrival. This time it was an insect that had migrated out of Mexico, destroying the cotton economy in the historical Cotton Belt in the southeastern United States, before eventually making its way into east Texas.
Mealer writes that “Farmers spoke of the boll weevil in reverent tones, while bluesmen honored them with ballads the way they did the Devil and loose women.”
DROUGHT AND DEATH
To escape the weevil, the Mealers moved to west Texas where the insect had not learned to survive the colder winters. The land was fertile, but the rainfall was uncertain and in 1915 drought caused the crops to fail and the family was forced to move and drift from one job to another.
The next year, Mealer’s great-grandmother succumbed to the Spanish flu outbreak.
DEPRESSION, DROUGHT, AND DUST BOWL
The stock market collapse in 1929 triggered the Great Depression, which was followed by drought and dust storms and the Dust Bowl that blanketed the plains states.
“A storm in late February,” writes Mealer, “lasted four days. It arrived from the Dakotas in front of seventy-mile-an-hour winds, blocking the sun. On the third day, it mixed with a blizzard in a freak circus of nature that few residents had ever seen. On March 22, the dust was so blinding that cowboys on the Guitar Ranch lost six hundred head of cattle they were driving through the shinnery [dense shrubbery].”
DROUGHT REDUX
Economic conditions in west Texas improved during the post-WWII era, of course. However, there were still major bumps in the prosperity road. In 1950, there began in Texas an epic and unprecedented drought, one that eventually covered ten plains states, surpassing all recorded droughts, including the Dust Bowl years. It was described by experts as the most devastating drought in 600 years.
The effects of the drought were greater in Texas than in any other state. There was no measurable rainfall for seven years. Elmer Kelton wrote in his classic novel, The Time It Never Rained, that it was a time when “many a boy would become a man before the land was green again.”
By the end of the decade Texas lost nearly a hundred thousand farms and ranches.
OIL
Because of the vulnerability of cotton cultivation to both economic downswings and natural calamities, some members of Mealer’s family took jobs in and around the communities of Midland, Odessa, and, especially, Big Spring, either in the oil fields or in enterprises related to oil production. This didn’t entirely solve their problems for the oil markets, subject to fluctuating demand and Middle Eastern competition, especially after the founding of the OPEC cartel, were almost as volatile as the cotton market, and the boom and bust nature of the industry set them adrift as they sought the means to support their families.
GOD
Don Graham wrote in his review of the book in the Dallas Times:
The Mealer families worked hard and played hard, and through it all, they counted on religion to keep them on the straight and narrow. What sustained them throughout was that old-time religion …. Their church of choice was the Assembly of God, which had rules so strict that they didn’t even allow their children to play football or attend football games.
Mealer contrasted his family’s church with that of their southern Baptist neighbors:
The Baptists down the road believed that once a person accepted Christ and was cleansed by his blood, their ticket to heaven was guaranteed. But not the members of the Assemblies of God, who in those days believed that even the slightest blemish of sin carried the whole weight of damnation. Each tiny transgression had to be reckoned with and expunged.
Practically every reviewer refers to the book as a “sprawling family saga,” and it is that for sure. It is the history of four generations over the course of more than a century. Fortunately, the author includes two family trees that help the reader to sort out the members of the large family.
But it is more than a family saga. It is also a history of twentieth century Texas, with an emphasis on the economic and natural calamities that made life so difficult for that family and so many others.
--------
“A masterwork of memoir and narrative history. ‘The King of Big Spring’ is an indelible portrait of fortune and ruin as big as Texas itself. And in telling the story of four generations of his family, Mealer also tells the story of how America came to be.” – Barbara Bamberger Scott, Bookreporter.com
November 20, 2017
Bryan Mealer writes his family's story brilliantly. I knew it was non-fiction, but it reads like a novel. Honestly, through out the whole thing I kept thinking "This will make a heck of a mini-series!".
I won't bother re-blurbing it for you...read the publisher's pitch...but I WILL tell you that it goes through at least five generations of tough people with tough luck (some of their own making), and that it's quite astonishing they persevered! I like West Texas and have recently been spending some time there, so the area was vivid for me in the story. This book is NOT preachy or judgemental. In fact, I almost got the idea that the author was shaking his head as he wrote about his family, sometimes laughing in disbelief!
I really liked this book.
I'm passing it on to my Aunt Bert who lives in West Texas, and I'm sure she'll pass it on to HER friends.
Pick it up in February! (Especially if you're a mini-series sort of person.)
I won't bother re-blurbing it for you...read the publisher's pitch...but I WILL tell you that it goes through at least five generations of tough people with tough luck (some of their own making), and that it's quite astonishing they persevered! I like West Texas and have recently been spending some time there, so the area was vivid for me in the story. This book is NOT preachy or judgemental. In fact, I almost got the idea that the author was shaking his head as he wrote about his family, sometimes laughing in disbelief!
I really liked this book.
I'm passing it on to my Aunt Bert who lives in West Texas, and I'm sure she'll pass it on to HER friends.
Pick it up in February! (Especially if you're a mini-series sort of person.)
January 13, 2018
I received an ARC through Goodreads Giveaways!
The Kings of Big Spring: God, Oil, and One Family’s Search for the American Dream by Bryan Mealer is boring. I’m reminded of Twenty One Pilots song lyrics in “Stressed Out” that read: “Sometimes a certain smell will take me back to when I was young. How come I’m never able to identify where it’s coming from? I’d make a candle out of it, if I ever found it. Try to sell it, never sell out of it, I’d probably only sell one. It’d be to my brother, cause we have the same nose, same clothes, home grown, ...” only Mealer did that writing a book about his family’s history. Luckily for Mealer, he has a rather large and extended family spread out across America and they are Mealer’s target audience in The Kings of Big Spring.
For the rest of us NOT related to the Mealers, there are scattered interesting moments detailing white poverty over two generations, and a combination of luck, wealth, alcohol and drugs, but 350+ pages? That was abusive to this reader. I had to read lightly because there were too many names of too many people that existed on the periphery of the story and were ultimately NOT important to anything to advance the story. In the end, the last 50 +\- pages were what really held my interest because Mealer dives into the personal story of his father; providing color and texture to a story that had otherwise been as dry as the dust bowl from which he sprung.
I would recommend this book to those who are passionate about small town history and don’t mind internal references that will likely fly right over your head.
Happy reading!
The Kings of Big Spring: God, Oil, and One Family’s Search for the American Dream by Bryan Mealer is boring. I’m reminded of Twenty One Pilots song lyrics in “Stressed Out” that read: “Sometimes a certain smell will take me back to when I was young. How come I’m never able to identify where it’s coming from? I’d make a candle out of it, if I ever found it. Try to sell it, never sell out of it, I’d probably only sell one. It’d be to my brother, cause we have the same nose, same clothes, home grown, ...” only Mealer did that writing a book about his family’s history. Luckily for Mealer, he has a rather large and extended family spread out across America and they are Mealer’s target audience in The Kings of Big Spring.
For the rest of us NOT related to the Mealers, there are scattered interesting moments detailing white poverty over two generations, and a combination of luck, wealth, alcohol and drugs, but 350+ pages? That was abusive to this reader. I had to read lightly because there were too many names of too many people that existed on the periphery of the story and were ultimately NOT important to anything to advance the story. In the end, the last 50 +\- pages were what really held my interest because Mealer dives into the personal story of his father; providing color and texture to a story that had otherwise been as dry as the dust bowl from which he sprung.
I would recommend this book to those who are passionate about small town history and don’t mind internal references that will likely fly right over your head.
Happy reading!
July 26, 2018
I really did not enjoy this book, as much as I wanted to. I admired all the research Bryan Mealer put into this book and the obvious candor with which his family spoke during the many interviews they had with him. I grew more engaged by the end, and there were certainly interesting vignettes along the way, but for the most part, the cast of characters was too large, encompassing not just the family, but many they encountered along the way. I lost track of who the main players even were. The family tree at the front of the book was helpful, but photos of the main characters would have been great and I wonder why Mealer did not include any. The boom / bust history of Texas oil is interesting, but unless the reader is a Mealer (in which case the book would be riveting), the level of detail about big and bit players alike could make a reader’s eyes glaze over (and did, with this reader).
October 6, 2017
I enjoyed reading this book. I see other reviewers have deemed it depressing. This is how life was at this time in this area of the country. My husband's grandmother wrote about her early life in Eastern New Mexico. There are many similarities. Folks had it hard.
The cattle, the farming, the oil busts and booms of West Texas and Eastern New Mexico are familiar to me, having lived in Eastern New Mexico as a small business owner with experience in cattle ranching and cotton farming for the past 45 years. Oil was and still is the driving force of life here.
Bryan Mealer does an excellent job documenting the effects of the Oil Patch on the lives of his family members. He brings us from the beginning with his great-grandfather leaving the foothills of Georgia making his way to Big Spring, Texas. We join in on their tragedies and successes.
The cattle, the farming, the oil busts and booms of West Texas and Eastern New Mexico are familiar to me, having lived in Eastern New Mexico as a small business owner with experience in cattle ranching and cotton farming for the past 45 years. Oil was and still is the driving force of life here.
Bryan Mealer does an excellent job documenting the effects of the Oil Patch on the lives of his family members. He brings us from the beginning with his great-grandfather leaving the foothills of Georgia making his way to Big Spring, Texas. We join in on their tragedies and successes.
January 29, 2018
BIOGRAPHY/TEXAS HISTORY
Bryan Mealer
The Kings of Big Spring: God, Oil, and One Family’s Search for the American Dream
Flatiron Books
Hardcover, 978-1-2500-5891-1, (also available as an e-book), 384 pgs., $27.99
February 6, 2018
“Only in Texas was there enough space for so many second acts.”
The Kings of Big Spring: God, Oil, and One Family’s Search for the American Dream is the best kind of history. The microcosm of a family story (anecdote) illustrates the macrocosm of a place and time (demographic). In Bryan Mealer’s account, his family’s history begins in 1892, when “trouble between the moonshiners and revenuers” motivated his great-grandfather to leave a Georgia hollow behind to join his brother in Texas, where he landed in Hillsboro. By 1909, motivated by the boll weevil, the Mealers lit out for West Texas, along with many others who “pulled their teams across the 98th meridian and entered the American West,” eventually finding their way to Big Spring, where oil has been discovered, refineries has been built, and a fifteen-story hotel is rising.
The Kings of Big Spring is Mealer’s biography of his family, part reporting and part deep dive into the psychology of a people, a time, and a place. Mealer is a former award-winning reporter for the Associated Press and Harper’s, which experience serves him well in the research and interviews involved in The Kings of Big Spring, his fourth book.
Mealer narrates in a hybrid of first person and omniscient, sprinkled with asides addressed directly to the reader. He has a flair for storytelling, a certain folksiness that is comfortable and humorous, rather than cartoonish. He writes movingly of the individual effects of drought, boll weevils, land swindles, OPEC, illnesses, death and dismemberment, and cyclical oil booms and busts (“a sour smell on the wind promised meat on the table”). He writes informatively on the settlement of Texas, the history of an industry, and the salutary effects of old-time religion in this setting. Mealer is equally adept at descriptions of horrific living conditions during the first oil booms, fascinating geology, and scary meteorology (dust storms mix with blizzards in a “freak circus of nature”).
Mealer pulls no punches, but his affection and admiration for his restless, driven family are clear. Mealer is sometimes exasperated by self-defeating behaviors and the fickleness of luck, and incredulous about family members allowed to simply disappear, incidents that wouldn’t be tolerated today. Mental illness, alcoholism, and jaw-dropping penury are handled sympathetically, sometimes sorrowfully.
The Kings of Big Spring is swiftly and evenly paced, mostly chronological, with a large cast of characters who are difficult to keep track of—for the family itself and the reader. The family tree and list of supporting characters included immediately before the prologue is necessary; you will find yourself referring to it.
Two steps forward and one step back, rich in detail and imagery, The Kings of Big Spring is an entertaining, educational, and engaging addition to the sparse library set at the juncture of the Chihuahuan desert and the Southern Plains. I grew up in the Permian Basin, born about a decade before the author. I recognize this country and these people. As Mealer writes, “This country can promise less and deliver more than anywhere on earth.”
Originally published by Lone Star Literary Life.
Bryan Mealer
The Kings of Big Spring: God, Oil, and One Family’s Search for the American Dream
Flatiron Books
Hardcover, 978-1-2500-5891-1, (also available as an e-book), 384 pgs., $27.99
February 6, 2018
“Only in Texas was there enough space for so many second acts.”
The Kings of Big Spring: God, Oil, and One Family’s Search for the American Dream is the best kind of history. The microcosm of a family story (anecdote) illustrates the macrocosm of a place and time (demographic). In Bryan Mealer’s account, his family’s history begins in 1892, when “trouble between the moonshiners and revenuers” motivated his great-grandfather to leave a Georgia hollow behind to join his brother in Texas, where he landed in Hillsboro. By 1909, motivated by the boll weevil, the Mealers lit out for West Texas, along with many others who “pulled their teams across the 98th meridian and entered the American West,” eventually finding their way to Big Spring, where oil has been discovered, refineries has been built, and a fifteen-story hotel is rising.
The Kings of Big Spring is Mealer’s biography of his family, part reporting and part deep dive into the psychology of a people, a time, and a place. Mealer is a former award-winning reporter for the Associated Press and Harper’s, which experience serves him well in the research and interviews involved in The Kings of Big Spring, his fourth book.
Mealer narrates in a hybrid of first person and omniscient, sprinkled with asides addressed directly to the reader. He has a flair for storytelling, a certain folksiness that is comfortable and humorous, rather than cartoonish. He writes movingly of the individual effects of drought, boll weevils, land swindles, OPEC, illnesses, death and dismemberment, and cyclical oil booms and busts (“a sour smell on the wind promised meat on the table”). He writes informatively on the settlement of Texas, the history of an industry, and the salutary effects of old-time religion in this setting. Mealer is equally adept at descriptions of horrific living conditions during the first oil booms, fascinating geology, and scary meteorology (dust storms mix with blizzards in a “freak circus of nature”).
Mealer pulls no punches, but his affection and admiration for his restless, driven family are clear. Mealer is sometimes exasperated by self-defeating behaviors and the fickleness of luck, and incredulous about family members allowed to simply disappear, incidents that wouldn’t be tolerated today. Mental illness, alcoholism, and jaw-dropping penury are handled sympathetically, sometimes sorrowfully.
The Kings of Big Spring is swiftly and evenly paced, mostly chronological, with a large cast of characters who are difficult to keep track of—for the family itself and the reader. The family tree and list of supporting characters included immediately before the prologue is necessary; you will find yourself referring to it.
Two steps forward and one step back, rich in detail and imagery, The Kings of Big Spring is an entertaining, educational, and engaging addition to the sparse library set at the juncture of the Chihuahuan desert and the Southern Plains. I grew up in the Permian Basin, born about a decade before the author. I recognize this country and these people. As Mealer writes, “This country can promise less and deliver more than anywhere on earth.”
Originally published by Lone Star Literary Life.
January 28, 2018
I heard this book described as if J.R. Ewing was real, and wrote a memoir. And of course, that's incredibly intriguing. Also, it turns out, more than a little misleading. I wish it had been that.
Mr. Mealer's family has long roots in Texas going back over 100 years, and throughout that century, they've gone boom and bust several times, and most of their fortunes and failures have been tied to the oil and gas industry. His family can be a lens through which to see the economic story of America, and certainly of Texas, writ small. And if he stuck to that, it would have been good. It would have been nice along the way to have more national context inserted here and there, but good.
But for me, it went off the rails at the end, where it also wants to be a memoir. Bryan didn't exist for the majority (9/10) of the story. But at the very end, where he does exist, but is a child, he reverts to calling his parents "Mom" and "Dad" instead of by their names, which was disconcerting. If the entire book had been a memoir instead of only the last 10%, that would make sense. Even if it had maybe been bookended or framed out as a memoir with a starting point from his point of view, and ideally a couple of midpoint stops where we get some perspective, that could have worked. It also would have made some sense if the end were at all memoir-like. If, for example, Bryan had been more than 10 years old and understood what was going on.
It wants to be a history of the country told through a single family, a family history, and a memoir, and since the author failed to decide on which one of these three books he was writing, and instead tried to be all of them, he failed at being any of them. Don't get me wrong--it's an interesting story and it does succeed at being a family history, and even in being an example story of the Great American Dream story. It fails at being a memoir, and when the narrative goes off the rails in that last section, it pulls the book down with it. I wish he'd been reined in more by his editor, and made to focus on one structure/goal for the book, as it could have been great. He has wonderful material he's working with here. But by being indecisive and trying to be everything, it ends up just a mess. It's a good read, if you don't mind that.
Mr. Mealer's family has long roots in Texas going back over 100 years, and throughout that century, they've gone boom and bust several times, and most of their fortunes and failures have been tied to the oil and gas industry. His family can be a lens through which to see the economic story of America, and certainly of Texas, writ small. And if he stuck to that, it would have been good. It would have been nice along the way to have more national context inserted here and there, but good.
But for me, it went off the rails at the end, where it also wants to be a memoir. Bryan didn't exist for the majority (9/10) of the story. But at the very end, where he does exist, but is a child, he reverts to calling his parents "Mom" and "Dad" instead of by their names, which was disconcerting. If the entire book had been a memoir instead of only the last 10%, that would make sense. Even if it had maybe been bookended or framed out as a memoir with a starting point from his point of view, and ideally a couple of midpoint stops where we get some perspective, that could have worked. It also would have made some sense if the end were at all memoir-like. If, for example, Bryan had been more than 10 years old and understood what was going on.
It wants to be a history of the country told through a single family, a family history, and a memoir, and since the author failed to decide on which one of these three books he was writing, and instead tried to be all of them, he failed at being any of them. Don't get me wrong--it's an interesting story and it does succeed at being a family history, and even in being an example story of the Great American Dream story. It fails at being a memoir, and when the narrative goes off the rails in that last section, it pulls the book down with it. I wish he'd been reined in more by his editor, and made to focus on one structure/goal for the book, as it could have been great. He has wonderful material he's working with here. But by being indecisive and trying to be everything, it ends up just a mess. It's a good read, if you don't mind that.
April 21, 2018
Quit after 150 pages and after I had to consult the family trees in the opening pages for the 937th time. Each person is spoken of as if they were in our family, which they aren't, the result being that the reader (or at least this one) never gets a solid sense of character and has to keep flipping back ("So wait ... Agnes is whose daughter?") I looked forward to reading this but I wish Mealer had just dealt with half the people.
October 15, 2018
I bought this book for my cowboy brother for his birthday but confess to reading it before I gave it to him. After all, I had to be sure he would like it.
I was born in Big Spring, the primary setting of The Kings of Big Spring. When I went to college, I left the little city behind and have only rarely been back for a few days at a time, usually for funerals. The author, Bryan Mealer is considerably younger than I am, but he captured the Big Spring of my teens. Reading his book, I recognized names I hadn’t thought of in decades and realized some of them were relatives. When he mentioned the 1967 Old Settlers’ Reunion, I recalled being at that event with my paternal grandparents. Similarly, when Midnight Cowboy was filmed there, my conservative relatives were aghast and made quite a stink over the movie’s Motion Picture Association of America “R” rating.
Nostalgia aside, Mealer weaves a unique history of a West Texas town. He seamlessly blends his family history with the history of Big Spring and its environs with that of the nation. Though he focuses on local goings-on, there’s enough national news to set the scene. This is not an in-depth history of America, but a close-up portrait of a small town. For instance, the Vietnam war warrants only a few lines here and there, but it’s enough to give the flavor of the deep divide between the pro- and anti-war factions in the country—and to show the war’s effect on Big Spring’s inhabitants.
Likewise, this is not a deep family portrait. Mealer covers four generations over many years, so there’s not a lot of emotion, but a retelling of family stories set gem-like into local life in Big Spring. The threads tying the stories together include oil and Jesus.
I enjoyed this book because the Mealer family history somewhat mirrors that of my own family. The Schafers arrived in West Texas forty years earlier and had already survived several droughts by the time the Mealers arrived. Though my family was recently blessed with the discovery of oil on our property, we haven’t taken the road of high-living the Mealers did. My uncles and aunts still run sheep and grow cotton, living in the same homes they’ve lived in for decades.
The Kings of Big Spring is a fascinating read, an epic tale of a a truly American family as well as a portrait of a time and place people outside of Texas can relate to, a family that started in tarpaper shacks and rose to dizzying heights, only to drop to the lows again.
I was born in Big Spring, the primary setting of The Kings of Big Spring. When I went to college, I left the little city behind and have only rarely been back for a few days at a time, usually for funerals. The author, Bryan Mealer is considerably younger than I am, but he captured the Big Spring of my teens. Reading his book, I recognized names I hadn’t thought of in decades and realized some of them were relatives. When he mentioned the 1967 Old Settlers’ Reunion, I recalled being at that event with my paternal grandparents. Similarly, when Midnight Cowboy was filmed there, my conservative relatives were aghast and made quite a stink over the movie’s Motion Picture Association of America “R” rating.
Nostalgia aside, Mealer weaves a unique history of a West Texas town. He seamlessly blends his family history with the history of Big Spring and its environs with that of the nation. Though he focuses on local goings-on, there’s enough national news to set the scene. This is not an in-depth history of America, but a close-up portrait of a small town. For instance, the Vietnam war warrants only a few lines here and there, but it’s enough to give the flavor of the deep divide between the pro- and anti-war factions in the country—and to show the war’s effect on Big Spring’s inhabitants.
Likewise, this is not a deep family portrait. Mealer covers four generations over many years, so there’s not a lot of emotion, but a retelling of family stories set gem-like into local life in Big Spring. The threads tying the stories together include oil and Jesus.
I enjoyed this book because the Mealer family history somewhat mirrors that of my own family. The Schafers arrived in West Texas forty years earlier and had already survived several droughts by the time the Mealers arrived. Though my family was recently blessed with the discovery of oil on our property, we haven’t taken the road of high-living the Mealers did. My uncles and aunts still run sheep and grow cotton, living in the same homes they’ve lived in for decades.
The Kings of Big Spring is a fascinating read, an epic tale of a a truly American family as well as a portrait of a time and place people outside of Texas can relate to, a family that started in tarpaper shacks and rose to dizzying heights, only to drop to the lows again.
February 12, 2018
In his new book, "The Kings of Big Spring: God, Oil, and One Family's Search for the American Dream", Bryan Mealer takes his readers into his family's history, and in doing so, takes them into from the "hollers" to the oil fields of the Permian Basin and many places in between.
Mealer's book has been compared to "Hillbilly Elegy", by JD Vance, but it really isn't like Vance's book. Though both tell the story of a family and it's background, from poor working class to relative middle class, Vance's book is written with a seemingly self-conscience look at his kin and from where they sprang. He knows quite well the long pull he made to move up in society through study and hard work. After reading Vance's book, I wondered if he would stay in touch with his family as he grew out of their milieu. But this review isn't about JD Vance's good book, it's about Bryan Mealer's.
Bryan Mealer's ancestors took the long trip in the early 1900's from the "hollers" of Appalachia to Texas for the same reason thousands of others set off - a search for the "good life". What they found was a hard and often difficult existence, where making a living had as much to do with weather and its vagueries as it did with a person's hard work. The winds came, the dust blew, and the Mealers often left Texas and headed further west to California. But they mostly seemed to return to Texas, and in particular, to Big Spring in the Permian Basin. It was in Big Spring and the oil towns of Midland and Odessa where the Mealers and their extended family lived and died. worked and prayed. And, at times, they drank and gambled. They raised their families and contributed to their communities. Though no Mealer ever struck it huge in the "oil bidness", Mealer's father was associated with a Texas-special guy, Grady Cunningham, who lived large and some of that largess fell on to Bobby Mealer and his family.
Bryan Mealer is an incredibly good writer. I'd never read his previous books and picked this book up because of the subject. He writes lovingly and totally without judgement on his family. That's how Mealer's book is different from Vance's. Mealer writes lovingly about his family -warts and all - while there's always a whiff of judgement in Vance's book. Mealer's book is easily one of the best works of non-fiction I've read in the past few years.
Mealer's book has been compared to "Hillbilly Elegy", by JD Vance, but it really isn't like Vance's book. Though both tell the story of a family and it's background, from poor working class to relative middle class, Vance's book is written with a seemingly self-conscience look at his kin and from where they sprang. He knows quite well the long pull he made to move up in society through study and hard work. After reading Vance's book, I wondered if he would stay in touch with his family as he grew out of their milieu. But this review isn't about JD Vance's good book, it's about Bryan Mealer's.
Bryan Mealer's ancestors took the long trip in the early 1900's from the "hollers" of Appalachia to Texas for the same reason thousands of others set off - a search for the "good life". What they found was a hard and often difficult existence, where making a living had as much to do with weather and its vagueries as it did with a person's hard work. The winds came, the dust blew, and the Mealers often left Texas and headed further west to California. But they mostly seemed to return to Texas, and in particular, to Big Spring in the Permian Basin. It was in Big Spring and the oil towns of Midland and Odessa where the Mealers and their extended family lived and died. worked and prayed. And, at times, they drank and gambled. They raised their families and contributed to their communities. Though no Mealer ever struck it huge in the "oil bidness", Mealer's father was associated with a Texas-special guy, Grady Cunningham, who lived large and some of that largess fell on to Bobby Mealer and his family.
Bryan Mealer is an incredibly good writer. I'd never read his previous books and picked this book up because of the subject. He writes lovingly and totally without judgement on his family. That's how Mealer's book is different from Vance's. Mealer writes lovingly about his family -warts and all - while there's always a whiff of judgement in Vance's book. Mealer's book is easily one of the best works of non-fiction I've read in the past few years.
February 28, 2018
A saga of family, fortune, faith in Texas, where blood is bond and oil is king…
In 1892, Bryan Mealer’s great-grandfather leaves the Georgia mountains and heads west into Texas, looking for wealth and adventure in the raw and open country. But his luck soon runs out. Beset by drought, the family loses their farm just as the dead pastures around them give way to one of the biggest oil booms in American history. They eventually settle in the small town of Big Spring, where fast fortunes are being made from its own reserves of oil. For the next two generations, the Mealers live on the margins of poverty, laboring in the cotton fields and on the drilling rigs that sprout along the flatland, weathering dust and wind, booms and busts, and tragedies that scatter them like tumbleweed. After embracing Pentecostalism during the Great Depression, they rely heavily on their faith to steel them against hardship and despair. But for young Bobby Mealer, the author’s father, religion is only an agent for rebellion.
In the winter of 1981, when the author is seven years old, Bobby receives a call from an old friend with a simple question, “How'd you like to be a millionaire?”
Twenty-six, and with a wife and three kids, Bobby had left his hometown to seek a life removed from the blowing dust and oil fields, and to find spiritual peace. But now Big Spring’s streets are flooded again with roughnecks, money, and sin. Boom chasers pour in from the busted factory towns in the north. Drilling rigs rise like timber along the pastures, and poor men become millionaires overnight.
Grady Cunningham, Bobby's friend, is one of the newly-minted kings of Big Spring. Loud and flamboyant, with a penchant for floor-length fur coats, Grady pulls Bobby and his young wife into his glamorous orbit. While drilling wells for Grady's oil company, they fly around on private jets and embrace the honky-tonk high life of Texas oilmen. But beneath the Rolexes and Rolls Royce cars is a reality as dark as the crude itself. As Bobby soon discovers, his return to Big Spring is a backslider’s journey into a spiritual wilderness, and one that could cost him his life.
A masterwork of memoir and narrative history, The Kings of Big Spring is an indelible portrait of fortune and ruin as big as Texas itself. And in telling the story of four generations of his family, Mealer also tells the story of America came
In 1892, Bryan Mealer’s great-grandfather leaves the Georgia mountains and heads west into Texas, looking for wealth and adventure in the raw and open country. But his luck soon runs out. Beset by drought, the family loses their farm just as the dead pastures around them give way to one of the biggest oil booms in American history. They eventually settle in the small town of Big Spring, where fast fortunes are being made from its own reserves of oil. For the next two generations, the Mealers live on the margins of poverty, laboring in the cotton fields and on the drilling rigs that sprout along the flatland, weathering dust and wind, booms and busts, and tragedies that scatter them like tumbleweed. After embracing Pentecostalism during the Great Depression, they rely heavily on their faith to steel them against hardship and despair. But for young Bobby Mealer, the author’s father, religion is only an agent for rebellion.
In the winter of 1981, when the author is seven years old, Bobby receives a call from an old friend with a simple question, “How'd you like to be a millionaire?”
Twenty-six, and with a wife and three kids, Bobby had left his hometown to seek a life removed from the blowing dust and oil fields, and to find spiritual peace. But now Big Spring’s streets are flooded again with roughnecks, money, and sin. Boom chasers pour in from the busted factory towns in the north. Drilling rigs rise like timber along the pastures, and poor men become millionaires overnight.
Grady Cunningham, Bobby's friend, is one of the newly-minted kings of Big Spring. Loud and flamboyant, with a penchant for floor-length fur coats, Grady pulls Bobby and his young wife into his glamorous orbit. While drilling wells for Grady's oil company, they fly around on private jets and embrace the honky-tonk high life of Texas oilmen. But beneath the Rolexes and Rolls Royce cars is a reality as dark as the crude itself. As Bobby soon discovers, his return to Big Spring is a backslider’s journey into a spiritual wilderness, and one that could cost him his life.
A masterwork of memoir and narrative history, The Kings of Big Spring is an indelible portrait of fortune and ruin as big as Texas itself. And in telling the story of four generations of his family, Mealer also tells the story of America came
April 12, 2018
THe "kings" of Big Spring, Texas, from the 1890s until the 1980s -- three oil types named Joshua Cosden, Raymond Tollett, and Grady Cunnningham -- are in many ways just incidental characters in this memior/history of five generations of the Mealer and Wilkerson families. Leaving Georgia for Texas int he 1890s, the Mealer clan endures hardship, poverty, dust storms, bad behavior and bad luck until the 1970s, when one of them (the author's father) strikes it big by knowing the right person at the right time. There's also a strong religious undercurrent to the book. Both the Mealer and the Wilkerson clans (joined by marriage during the third Texas generation) are devout Assemblies of God believers and much of there story is impacted by this strong faith. In some ways Mealer's story is "Hillbilly Elegy" Texas-style, with lots of folk gone awry courtesy of the many available bad influences and the uncertain nature of Texas's oil economy. But this is a longer book than "Elegy," and frankly, not as interesting. The writing is good, but there are so many characters and their behavior is frequently so random thatit's hard to find a story line or to assign a purpose to the tale other than to catalog a list of family successes (a few) and failures (many more).
February 9, 2018
Thank you Flatironbooks and lifeinlit for the giveaway copy for me to review!
“We were eager to put down roots and start something better, to help built this nation during its greatest century.” This was a family’s tale of riches, oil, the great depression, the dust bowl and family in Texas. I was at first a bit overwhelmed with the amount of people in this book but eventually stopped worrying about who was who and just read the story. I was fascinated by the stories about the oil boom, the great depression and the dust bowl. These are all things that I hadn’t had very much knowledge to begin with and this book led me to a lot of topics and great music from the depression era.
Following this family through their hardships and successes was very interesting, one minute they were up the next they were down. I liked the nonfiction factual parts of it but I also enjoyed the memoir type stories from the family members. This book did remind me a lot of Killers of the flower moon by David Grann so if you liked that one you will like this one. There were several parts where I thought the story would begin to drag but the author was great about picking up the pace after.
4⭐️’s
“We were eager to put down roots and start something better, to help built this nation during its greatest century.” This was a family’s tale of riches, oil, the great depression, the dust bowl and family in Texas. I was at first a bit overwhelmed with the amount of people in this book but eventually stopped worrying about who was who and just read the story. I was fascinated by the stories about the oil boom, the great depression and the dust bowl. These are all things that I hadn’t had very much knowledge to begin with and this book led me to a lot of topics and great music from the depression era.
Following this family through their hardships and successes was very interesting, one minute they were up the next they were down. I liked the nonfiction factual parts of it but I also enjoyed the memoir type stories from the family members. This book did remind me a lot of Killers of the flower moon by David Grann so if you liked that one you will like this one. There were several parts where I thought the story would begin to drag but the author was great about picking up the pace after.
4⭐️’s
December 8, 2017
I received this book from a goodreads giveaway.
A thoroughly entertaining family history.
The amount of research that had to have been done to compile this much material is hard to imagine. Not just the genealogy, but the details and tidbits surrounding each person is what really brings the book to life.
In an effort to provide a balanced review, I tried to come up with a weakness in the book or something it was lacking. The closest I could come up with was that there was almost to much material, but I couldn't come up with anything that could have been cut without leaving a gap or void in the story.
The early release version of the book I received does not include any family trees like it appears the final versions may have, that would have been helpful, but I certainly can't hold that against the book.
The only thing holding me back from giving it 5 stars is that I probably wouldn't come back to it again for a reread, but I would strongly recommend it to anyone who enjoys this genre.
A thoroughly entertaining family history.
The amount of research that had to have been done to compile this much material is hard to imagine. Not just the genealogy, but the details and tidbits surrounding each person is what really brings the book to life.
In an effort to provide a balanced review, I tried to come up with a weakness in the book or something it was lacking. The closest I could come up with was that there was almost to much material, but I couldn't come up with anything that could have been cut without leaving a gap or void in the story.
The early release version of the book I received does not include any family trees like it appears the final versions may have, that would have been helpful, but I certainly can't hold that against the book.
The only thing holding me back from giving it 5 stars is that I probably wouldn't come back to it again for a reread, but I would strongly recommend it to anyone who enjoys this genre.
November 11, 2018
Mealer is a gifted storyteller. The book reads as part nostalgia, part memories of times gone by whilst sitting with the author around a roaring fire in a comfortable arm chair. I appreciate the unvarnished history of the family over 4 generations, that survived another day through sheer grit, faith, hope and perseverance. Also fascinating to see that the atmospheric, political and economic factors are cyclical and it behooves us to remember the history, to have a context to understand the present. Often, events that seem only present in our lifetime, may not be exclusive and maybe repetitive. One needs to be not myopic about events and see them with a long view.
October 4, 2018
I truly enjoyed this book and the ups and downs of four generations of Texas families. Rain and weevils take a role in the lives and dreams of these West Texas families & the importance of oil.
The characters were complex and woven deeply throughout the book & the reader is brought through the years of struggle and success with interesting, thought provoking success.
The characters were complex and woven deeply throughout the book & the reader is brought through the years of struggle and success with interesting, thought provoking success.
January 12, 2018
Amazing! I am so impressed that this author was able to follow his family back 4 generations. It is a true treasure of family history as well as American history. So lucky to have this chronical to share. Although a memoir of one family's place in history it is so much more. It reads like a novel and is a true story of an American experience. Also well documented with a bibliography of interviews, newspapers, and historical facts within the book. Many may want to know more and they will be able to do so easily. A good read.
December 13, 2017
Family history of 5 generations trying to survive and thrive in western Texas. Sometimes the book got a little big with all the different people and places involved, but it was very readable, not a dry history at all. A lot of the reference material used were oral histories of family stories, so it was entertaining, though perhaps a little colored by years of retelling. Farming, droughts, oil, bank loans, good times and bad times. Big highs and horrible lows, this book has it all.
February 22, 2018
I read approximately a third of this book before I gave up. I enjoyed Mealer's last book, "Muck," and the writing in "The Kings of Big Spring" is likewise engaging. I grew frustrated trying to follow this multi-generational saga with more characters than a Russian novel. The narrative was likewise fragmented and hard to follow. Characters are introduced, discussed, and then dropped never to be heard from again.
May 31, 2018
I loved this book!!!!! If you like history, people getting rich, people getting poor, good Americans, bad Americans, rags to riches, riches to rags, entrepreneurs, big corps, big men, little men and Texas,( but really a micro history of America from 1880 to present). You will enjoy this book!
December 29, 2017
I won this in a Goodreads giveaway.
An interesting story of the author's family history. Tons of details and emotion!
An interesting story of the author's family history. Tons of details and emotion!
June 7, 2019
In the tradition of Mary Karr's "The Liar's Club" and Domingo Martinez's "The Boy Kings of Texas," Bryan Mealer's book takes on West Texas and the high-flying, boom or bust oil cycle that drives most of Texas. While it does not have the grit of these other works, it does reflect the nature of living in the oil-driven Texas economy and accurately portrays the West Texas culture. Perhaps the only thing missing was football obsessive coaches. His tone is always respectful, especially of religious matters, something this Christian appreciates. I particularly was drawn to his careful history of the various regions, and I appreciate his ability to explain refining, geology, and financial matters.
I think this is one that Texans will appreciate.
I think this is one that Texans will appreciate.
March 18, 2021
This is a really well written family biography that covers a lot of important historical events from a small-town family's view.
March 12, 2018
This book is mostly a partial history of Big Springs, Texas and it's major players with the authors family history as a tangent as well as part memoir when the author shows up in it. The Mealer family leaves rural Georgia in the late 1800's to try and find a better life in West Texas, eventually settling in West Texas farm country near Big Springs and making this a place the family orbits for the next hundred plus years. The history of drought and oil booms and busts in West Texas was interesting and these events drive the family into poverty and tragedy. The story of Grady Cunningham, a friend of the authors father and his rise in Big Springs was also interesting in a train wreck sort of way. The family history isn't as interesting as the events that went on around them as their story was more peripheral to the events that were the most compelling. The I received a free ARC of this book through Goodreads First Reads giveaways.
March 15, 2018
Melodramatic as a country western song, but instructive and inspiring. The Mealers and Wilkersons are tough, bright, and unflinchingly hard-working.
" For another year he watched classmates couple up for homecoming and prom and listened to friends brag of conquests at the drive-in. For Homer the car keys were off limits if his date was not a member of the Assemblies of God, and most of the girls in his church were kin. By the time Homer graduated in May 1957, he'd been allowed to attend only one football game, and that was to sell peanuts for Future Farmers of America. 'You can go,' Little Opal said,'as long as you don't watch the game.' Directly after graduation, as classmates shucked their caps and gowns and drove off to the pastures to drink beer, Homer climbed into his truck and delivered a load of bulls to California. At least he had the road." (p. 149)
" For another year he watched classmates couple up for homecoming and prom and listened to friends brag of conquests at the drive-in. For Homer the car keys were off limits if his date was not a member of the Assemblies of God, and most of the girls in his church were kin. By the time Homer graduated in May 1957, he'd been allowed to attend only one football game, and that was to sell peanuts for Future Farmers of America. 'You can go,' Little Opal said,'as long as you don't watch the game.' Directly after graduation, as classmates shucked their caps and gowns and drove off to the pastures to drink beer, Homer climbed into his truck and delivered a load of bulls to California. At least he had the road." (p. 149)
August 20, 2018
Bryan Mealer did such an excellent job of telling his family story. Most of the book is about the oil patch starting in the Eastland and Cisco area and on into the Permian Basin around Midland, Odessa, and Big Spring. I was fascinated with the history of Cosden Oil, and characters that his family was involved with through the years of struggle to make it in that volatile world. His description of the hard times kept me on the edge of my seat, and brought back memories of my own struggles. I was right at home with his discussion of God, Jesus, faith and salvation, and I appreciate his openness about his family's religion and other member's rebellion. This book was especially meaningful since I spent all my years teaching out in the Permian Basin. I love that country, so I relished the mention of each spot on the map with which I am so familiar. Great read!
February 18, 2018
This book tells an incredible tale of what happened to Texas and the Mealers when the oil came in. A multi-generational saga of one family that is impacted by drought, crop failure, oil, fortune and ruin. The Mealers were a big family held together by love and God even when fate and bad decisions physically separated them.
This is an amazing historical perspective of Texas beginning in the late 1800s and the brushes with fame and glory that the various branches of the Mealer family experienced. It makes me want to travel to parts of my state that I've not visited so I can envision the town of Big Spring in its heyday.
If you think you know Texas, The Kings of Big Spring might tell you a new story that is brilliantly colored by these characters as well as the blowing sand.
This is an amazing historical perspective of Texas beginning in the late 1800s and the brushes with fame and glory that the various branches of the Mealer family experienced. It makes me want to travel to parts of my state that I've not visited so I can envision the town of Big Spring in its heyday.
If you think you know Texas, The Kings of Big Spring might tell you a new story that is brilliantly colored by these characters as well as the blowing sand.
October 24, 2017
Being employed in a job within the oil industry and having relatives employed presently and in the past was enough to make me interested in this book. I'd like to thank FLATIRON Books for publishing this book by Bryan Mealer and putting it on Goodreads Giveaway. I am thankful that I got to win an ARC of this book. This was my first Mealer book and it left me hungry for more. I loved the old tidbits of the history of BIg Spring. I know there has been a lot of families that have had a rough go of it though the generations, especially if you go back to the days of the Great Depression, some not as bad- some worse. What amazes me was Mealer's ability to weave an epic story through it all.
December 12, 2017
Dear Mealer family, what a privilege it was to read your history! Through trials and tribulations your resilient nature stood true. I never knew much about the oil rush of the Midwest or, more importantly, the struggles of families during this time period.
It is evident the author put an enormous amount of research into this text. (Permian Basin was a foreign place to me, prior to reading this narrative.) Through draught, poverty, heartache, drugs, war, and so much more - the search of the American Dream is ever present.
Next work: tips and insight on how to research one's own family heritage.
It is evident the author put an enormous amount of research into this text. (Permian Basin was a foreign place to me, prior to reading this narrative.) Through draught, poverty, heartache, drugs, war, and so much more - the search of the American Dream is ever present.
Next work: tips and insight on how to research one's own family heritage.
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