Magnolia City

A sweeping, sumptuous story of love, greed, jealousy, and redemption that evokes the turmoil and drama rippling through the history of the Lone Star State. 1920s Houston is a city of cotton kings and newly rich oil barons. Kirby Augustus Allen, grandson of the Allen brothers who founded Houston as a real estate deal, is grooming his daughter Hetty to marry Lamar Rusk, scion of the Splendora oil fortune. Instead, at the No-Tsu-Oh Carnival of 1928, beautiful, rebellious Hetty encounters a mysterious man from Montana dressed in the gear of a wildcatter-an outsider named Garret MacBride. Hetty is torn between Lamar's lavish courtship and her instinctive connection to Garret. As Lamar's wife she would be guaranteed acceptance to the highest ranks of Houston society. Yet Garret, poor but powerfully ambitious, offers the adventure she craves. It's a Texas-sized rivalry that could shape the future of the state as rumors of a vast, untapped ocean of oil in East Texas spark a frenzy that can make fortunes-or shatter lives and dreams beyond repair. ""A compelling and evocative portrait of Houston in the 1920s. In turns thrilling, heartbreaking and uplifting, you will not want to put this book down until you've seen Hetty MacBride through all of her trials and triumphs."" -Rebecca Kanner, author of Esther

Duncan W. Alderson was born in Oil Town, USA, where he began his career writing advertising copy. He then escaped Texas to become an expat in England. After teaching for twelve years at the Toronto Waldorf School, Duncan founded the Rabbit Hill Writers’ Studio in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Inspired by photos of his mother as a flapper in El Paso, Texas, he spent ten years researching and developing Magnolia City.