Sweetwater, Oklahoma

About the Book

"A crow hopped onto the grown-over dirt path, reminding me of beginnings, and I hung back, my head in the low branches of a mulberry tree and took time to watch. In the boughs, chimes I’d strung years ago plinked an irate, whangy, far-eastern melody, like Jimi Hendrix raised up in Danang. Three sparrowhawks swooped in a rush on the crow’s back, wings beating dull explosions. The birds took their fight to the branches of a cottonwood in a grimy, pink haze. Feathers, dust, dew, and blood rose and hung above the trail. . I wished I could go on to the Fleur Rouge with my fishing pole, tramping through the neglected pasture of waist-high native blue stem and lespedeza, on this, the first full day off I’d allowed myself - including weekends - in two months, but I knew that was impossible, for my duty lay in finding and arresting my best and oldest friend. Tischa Spybuck had come this morning with the news that her husband, Johnny, had finally killed a lawman. Women are better in crisis. This is rare philosophy for most of the population, I know, but I have come to be sure of it. Women have the small advantage of lower expectations on the deal because they are looked upon to fold. Not a monstrous particular, but in times of stress very often the subtleties make the difference. “This is why I’m here,” Tischa’s measured voice had said, “instead of sitting with my children, mopping up tears and lying to them that their dad is going to be all right. You find him before he is hunted down and killed like a loose dog.” So begins “Killing Scissor-tailed Flycatchers is Unlawful,” one in a collection of connected stories in SWEETWATER, OKLAHOMA. Sweetwater is a thriving small city of the modern prairie, inhabited by a country of people common and curious at the same time, a folk whose lives range from the earthly and discouraged to the sublime. SWEETWATER, OKLAHOMA is a book full of surprises. We pull for an Indian godfather on the run. We visit a defiant lady rancher fighting for land and life. We watch an adulterous soap opera father trying to win back a son he has forsaken. Many more colorful citizens and their stories await us in this book to relish. The Sweetwater, Oklahoma of these stories exist only in the mind of the author and in the souls of the characters who inhabit them. This town is not to be found on any road map. There exists a genuine Sweetwater edgewise on the Oklahoma-Texas panhandle border in the steppe region, but it is forlorn and empty seeming in a way the fictional Sweetwater is not. You may find the real-life town on the Rand-McNally at coordinates F-4, or if you somehow lose your way off I-40 motoring toward Amarillo. The town - if it can be so called - is punctuated by a four-way stop sign, a couple of abandoned buildings and a mounted arrow pointing in the direction of the school house a mile from the highway on the other side of a hill that seems a relative mountain, given the flatness of the rest of the landscape. Any similarities between the two locales or to any living persons of any locale and the characters in these stories are altogether accidental, if not downright miraculous.

About the Author

Stanley W. Beesley, a native of Oklahoma, also wrote VIETNAM: THE HEARTLAND REMEMBERS (University of Oklahoma Press, Berkley Publishing Group), a book which gives voice to a body of American men and women who fought the Vietnam War. Critical acclaim for this work came from Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist Magazine, Military History, West Coast Review, Washington Monthly, Tulsa Tribune, Dallas Morning News, The Californians, Sunday Oklahoman and many more. “This is a hard, strong book.” - New York City Tribune. “Highly recommended.” Library Journal . “The book is a dark walk down Memory Lane. Take the walk.” - Topeka Capital-Journal. “ Beesley has done quite well.” - Mark Baker, author of award winning NAM. VIETNAM: THE HEARTLAND REMEMBERS was a 1996 Junior Scholastic Magazine book club selection (For mature readers.) as a resource for young people on the American experience in Vietnam.