Publisher's Synopsis
Elithe Hamilton Kirkland, a pioneering journalist-turned-novelist, spent most of the 20th century chronicling the history and legends of Texas in stories, poems, songs, and dramatic presentations. Her final major work is PRECIOUS MEMORIES, produced in 1987 with the Salt Lick Foundation, a traditional-country string band from East Texas. The episodes of PRECIOUS MEMORIES range from the tale of Old Rip, the fabled horned lizard from Eastland County, to the hardships of Texas' society of cedar-choppers, to tales of hoboes, cotton farmers, backwoods dogs, and the oil boom of the 1920s. The revue peaks with a spot-on re-creation of a 1937 radio broadcast by the Stamps Gospel Quartet, for which Mrs. Kirkland once served as a producer and publicist. The author appears as narrator -- only a few days after her 80th birthday. The book is a companion-piece to a DVD edition of the original production.
