Celia Hill's Headin' West - by Celia Hill & Bill Wright & Marianne Wood (Paperback)

About the Book

"This collection of stories sets out a first-person account of a family who moved from Memphis, Tennessee, in the late 1800s to Hobart, Oklahoma, and then to Texas, back to Oklahoma and back again to Texas. The Oklahoma stint afforded a memory of Geronimo, so the indecision of the family bore this fruit, if no other. Through Celia Hill's lens we learn about life in the western part of Texas as she grew to become a competent cowgirl and later a schoolteacher. Except for an epilogue Celia wrote about a homecoming for the people who lived in Terlingua prior to 1946, we have nothing from her own hand about her life after 1945. But an interview by Bob Phillips of Texas Country Reporter in 2006 gives us more of her story and interviews with her son, Rusty Hill, fill in more gaps"--

Book Synopsis

Celia Smith Hill's journal provides a glimpse of hardscrabble life in far West Texas during the first half of the twentieth century. Hill's family moved to Texas from Tennessee in the late 1800s. After her death, Bill Wright and Marianne Wood researched the history of the area and interviewed family and friends to provide context for Hill's colorful tale of endurance in an unforgiving landscape. Hill's family suffered lean times during the Depression before cinnabar--mercury ore--was discovered on her family's property. During World War II, the Fresno Mines supplied one tenth of all the mercury produced in the United States. After graduating college, Celia began a peripatetic teaching career that lasted decades, marrying and losing two husbands along the way. Finally, living alone along the most remote western border of Texas, Celia spent her later years selling snacks to the occasional visitor. Bill Wright met Celia at her La Junta General Store in Ruidosa, where she told him about her unfinished journal. With this book Bill fulfills his promise to share her courageous and fascinating life with others.

About the Author

BILL WRIGHT's photographs are in many private collections as well as in such museums as the Amon Carter in Fort Worth and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. He is the author of nine books. MARIANNE WOOD holds a fine arts degree from Texas Tech University and has taught art in museums, schools, and universities.