I think this is the first time I have written a book review here. In fact it may be the first time I have written a book review since I got out of high school. But I have noticed several of my blogger friends reviewing books lately so I decided to try my hand at it too.

The Time It Never Rained is not a new book. It was published over thirty years ago and written well before then by Elmer Kelton, a San Angelo newspaperman who wrote a good many novels, mostly 19th century cowboy sagas. This is widely celebrated as his best book. Some West Texans hold it out as “their story.” It has been on my list to read for years and I finally got around to it last week.

Some people see this as the tale of the great Texas drought of the nineteen-fifties. Others see it as a character study of the West Texas rancher or a conflict between the rancher and the government programs of the times. It’s all of those things in a way but for me it is more significantly the story of how the country was transformed…