Waltz Across Texas

By Bonnie Moore

Waltz Across Texas is a love story of two people who led a difficult life trying to start a home during the Great Depression.

Roy was a musician who never took a lesson but was gifted with an ear for music. This ability was the catalyst that brought him into contact with Alice, a beautiful dark-haired beauty. When they met at a friends house, it was love at first sight. The love story opens up a world lost in time but forever remembered as a waltz across Texas one last time.

Though they wanted material items, they were blessed with friends who were brought together by the music of Roy and his violin.

The novel weaves a thread of love that weaves characters together. It is told through the eyes of their daughter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984527080

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 by Bonnie Moore.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2018906704

ISBN:             Hardcover                 978-1-9845-2710-3

                        Softcover                   978-1-9845-2709-7

                       eBook                         978-1-9845-2708-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 07/24/2018

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CONTENTS

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

I can tell it now. It’s been eleven years since my father died after suffering terribly from pancreatic cancer. At the end he simply said, I am ready to go home, and died in my mother’s arms. At the funeral home, I panicked when the attendants came into the room and started wheeling the casket out. I turned to my brothers and cried, but nothing could stop the inevitable—the funeral where the minister recalled my father’s life, but who was he to tell the story? And who am I? And yet I sense the urgency to try. I can only tell what I know. And that is what my mother has told me. She is a wonderful storyteller and periodically throughout the years of my life she has impressed the following details upon my memory so indelibly that they coexist with facts I have learned in school, as if I had taken a course titled, The Few Known Truths About the Life of Roy Wells. There have been others, incredibly famous others, about whom less is known. Like Shakespeare, who has had thousands of books, articles., essays, dissertations, doctoral theses written about his life, when, in fact only a few documented verities exist. He was born in Stratford-on-Avon in England. His baptismal records are dated April 26, 1564, and his and his birth assumed to be April 23 since babies were officially baptized when they were three days old. I have committed each known detail to memory and can stand in front of my Senior English class and recite each statistic as if I had known him personally. The sad truth is that I know more about the authors of the Emerald Isle than I do about my own father. He gave his heart to only one person and it was to my mother, and so I must tell it through her eyes and voice. Father was born in Daviess County, Kentucky on March 6, 1915. His mother’s name was Bertha and his father’s John. His father was a farmer who farmed a rich man’s land. There were thirteen children. His mother was from Germany and I used to worry that maybe they were persecuted during the war. But, my mother explained that they were on the other side and all had blue eyes, pale skin, and musically talented. John had a gift not many are blessed with as he could play music by ear. My father also had this ability and learned to play the fiddle by standing behind his father and watching and listening. He had found his greatest joy besides my mother. My father could play any musical instrument. It amazes me that he had this ability. My oldest brother inherited this and could play the fiddle, guitar, organ, piano. I have waited as all the sons and daughters were born for them to exhibit this talent, but it never surfaced.

When my father was nine, he walked into the bathroom and discovered his father had cut his throat with a razor. I can only imagine the horror of this and feel his anguish. I used to worry that my grandfather had a mental illness that caused him to take his life and that it might be inherited. When I asked my mother why he had done it, she said a horse had kicked him in the head. I always worried that she had tried to reassure me that it was nothing to worry about.

I was the only girl born into the family sandwiched between two older brothers and two younger. My younger brother, Johnny, and I were inseparable. We lived on thirty acres of wooded land. We had lived in the city of Owensboro until my oldest brother got into trouble with friends. My father searched for a farm he could buy and found acreage for sale in Habit, Kentucky. I vividly remember riding in the car holding on to our dog Tippy. It seemed to take forever