Booknotes: Saltgrass Prairie Saga

New Arrival:

• Saltgrass Prairie Saga: A German American Family in Texas by Jim Burnett (TAMU Pr, 2025).

In the Confederate wartime experience, isolation between home and fighting fronts was among the most extreme for Texas soldiers and civilians. The state of Texas and the rest of the Trans-Mississippi theater comprised a vast land mass on its own, and its soldiers were additionally spread all across the western theater and, perhaps most famously, into Lee's army in Virginia. The isolating effects of those vast distances between camp and battlefields on one end and home and hearth on the other were only exacerbated by uncertain communications across the wide Mississippi River that became almost impossibly precarious post-Vicksburg. Those challenges and more are explored in Jim Burnett's Saltgrass Prairie Saga: A German American Family in Texas.

From the description: "In Saltgrass Prairie Saga, John and Johanette Stengler, with their seven children in tow, leave the small central German village of Dietz and land in Galveston on New Year’s Eve, 1845: two days after Texas officially joined the United States. The world this family entered is contextualized through military reports, newspaper articles, personal correspondence, and local and state records." Though the book follows a long stretch of Texas and family history, the emphasis is on the Civil War years (which is, of course, great for our purposes!).

Questions addressed through the lens of the Stengler family Civil War experience include: "(W)hat was life like for the families who endured wartime separation? How did women ensure stability at home while their husbands, fathers, and brothers were ordered away to risk their lives? How did families remain connected despite separation and the pressures of survival?"

In sum: "Blending life and settlement on the frontier, the early years of the Texas cattle trade, the waves of immigration during the period, and the impact of the Civil War, Saltgrass Prairie Saga offers a fresh view of a pivotal period in Texas history."

This is an April title that was checklisted with the publisher, but, as sometimes happens, the prospective review copy must have gotten lost in the shuffle somewhere, never made it into my hands, and ended up fading from my mind. Happily, the author contacted me a short time ago and inquired about my interest in getting a copy directly from him. So special thanks to Jim for both the fresh reminder of this interesting book (which looks like something right up my alley) and for sending one my way.