AUSTIN, Texas, Feb. 6, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- Imagine 1911, October, the last of the cotton crop is just about picked. Billy and his brother, Lige, discuss whether Billy should go to western Texas to become the foreman of a goat ranch. Narrated by Billy's grandchild, Light On The Stairway (now available through 1stBooks Library) by Arthur Dykes is an exciting and interesting new novel.
Maggie, Billy's wife, and the brothers decide heading west is a good idea. The job begins January 1, 1912. On the way to catch the train, Maggie sees a picture she longs for of a little girl. They arrive, poor, at Del Rio after a long train ride to spend an exciting year on an isolated ranch.
At the end of the year the workers on the ranch gather with their families for a tamalada (tamal feast) and Posada for the Navidad (Christmas.) The couple decides they are too isolated and their children need a school. They return to Waxahachie, their original home, to continue farming.
Fast forward to 1952. The narrator finds a long lost picture of a little girl dressed in her night clothes, a candle in one hand and a china doll in the other, that hung in Billy's and Maggie's bedroom. When the couple lost their farm to the great depression in 1936, the picture disappeared and the narrator never knew what happened to it.
The book includes an array of colorful character including: Odeana Pitts, a Christian missionary woman; Sigmund Hellman, an Austrian Jewish lawyer, his son, who are trying to escape Nazi terror, Raji Vanamalla, an Indian business man, his brother, Navid, who is an aspiring movie star in India, a young Chinese woman who is the business manager for a Honolulu madam, a fraternity housemother and Jaime del Norte, a Mexican architect. As readers flip the pages, they will wonder: does a fiery and disastrous end await these vibrant characters?
The author was born in Dallas, grew up and was educated in the public schools of Italy and Texas, just south of Dallas. In 1944 he volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army in World War II. He attended college at Texas A & M (ASTRP) and, after the war, The University of Texas. He received a bachelor's degree in architecture in 1953. After graduation he lived in Houston, El Campo and San Antonio where he worked as an architect. In 1970 he moved with his wife and two sons to Austin where he worked for The University of Texas and the state of Texas. Dykes is a mason and a member of the Episcopal Church. Light on the Stairway is his first published book.
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