Texas native John J. Dwyer’s new novel When the Bluebonnets Come (Bluebonnet Press, April 2007) turns the popular author’s focus from historical epics to a heartfelt modern-day story of the people and land of the Texas bluebonnet country.  One Texas reviewer calls the new work Dwyer’s “best book.”

When the Bluebonnets Come centers on a Texas woman’s wistful remembrance of a pivotal few months during her Ellis County childhood, and the impact the actions of her father (the pastor of a small church and a former football star), while facing great danger, had on her.  Dwyer drew his inspiration for both the story and the characters in When the Bluebonnets Come from the many years he himself lived out near Bristol and Ennis, in the heart of the Ellis County bluebonnet country.  His wife and daughter both grew up on that land.

Fellow author William D. Watkins (The New Absolutes, The Spiritual Disciplines) says that Dwyer’s storytelling in Bluebonnets evokes that of stalwarts of the Southern literary tradition such as Robert Penn Warren, Pat Conroy, and Larry McMurtry.  Like Warren’s classic All the King’s Men, When the Bluebonnets Come poses the question—does the virtue of even the most honorable person, in the end, have its price?  Like To Kill a Mockingbird, Bluebonnets evokes an unforgettable sense of time, place, and community, in which a young girl’s life is forever changed by the encroachment of the outside world on her own.

As main character and narrator Katie Shanahan says, “When I get to heaven, one of the first things I’m gonna ask God is why He only let me figure so many things out later, when I could’ve used them earlier.”

Watkins said he recognized some of the stylistic borrowings from All the King's Men, yet, "At the same time I see the love of the people and land that wasn't in All the King's Men, but was in The Prince of Tides. What a great combination!"

"Even if I had never been to any rural part of Texas, after reading this story I'd feel like I've been there,” Watkins added.  “I can smell it, I can see it, I have a feel for all the characters. This is written by somebody who truly loves Texas. I haven't read anything that touched me like this novel since reading All the King's Men, and the wonderful mixture of pain and beauty that was The Prince of Tides."

To young Katie in When the Bluebonnets Come, growing up near the tiny town of Cotton Patch is mainly about gentle animals, sweeping vistas of bluebonnets, salt-of-the-earth people of the land, and her loving daddy Ethan who is a preacher and a football hero.  But when the specter of an increasingly ominous gambling casino proposed for the area, a series of arsons, and finally, division within the Shanahans’ own church and even their own home, invade her idyllic little world, she learns that that world--no less than the outside one—is not at all what she thought it was. 

By the time the bluebonnets come, Katie learns much from her parents; the half-blind old woman known only as Miz T; pastor George Washington Jasper, whose church gets burned down by arsonists; troubled Cotton Patch football star Jed Schumacher; the richest—and meanest—man in the county, Shorty Anderson; and even skeet-fishing Clay, squirrel-shooting Jumpy, bicycle-riding Jose, and silent, jogging Jefe. “Don’t you know by now,” she muses, “that God is the God o’ the seen and the unseen?”

As one reviewer writes, “John Dwyer tells the truth about Texas…” as only a person of it and from it truly can.

George Grant, best-selling author of such books as Blood of the Moon and Grand Illusions, calls When the Bluebonnets Come, “A wonderful novel. Full of beauty, goodness, and truth.”

William Murchison, Radford Distinguished Professor of Journalism at Baylor University and former senior columnist of The Dallas Morning News, writes, “How do I know there’s a God?  Because, for one thing, he keeps raising up eloquent, decisive champions of the faith:  the likes of John Dwyer.”

Dwyer’s previous novels, Stonewall and Robert E. Lee, as well as his 700-page historical narrative The War Between the States:  America’s Uncivil War, have sold tens of thousands of copies, each has gone into subsequent printings, and all remain in print.

For more information about When the Bluebonnets Come and to access both a dramatic preview video and information about Dwyer’s other books and CDs, please visit www.bluebonnetpress.com.

When the Bluebonnets Come

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Click here to read the opening chapter of When the Bluebonnets Come

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Who you will meet in When the Bluebonnets Come

John Compares Bluebonnets to Similar Literary Works

What others are saying