The Kings Of Big Spring: God, Oil and One Family's Search for the American Dream - Hardcover

"The Kings of Big Spring tears like a flaming roller-coaster through four generations of a Texas family that's lived it all, from hardscrabble farms and tarpaper shacks to the crazy-making highs of oil booms and big money, with gobs of love, lust, heartache, and Jesus along the way. Bryan Mealer has given us a brilliant, and brilliantly entertaining, portrayal of family, and a bursting-at-the-seams chunk of America in the bargain." -- Ben Fountain, New York Times bestselling author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk "Mealer has pulled off something downright remarkable here. On one level, he has penned a sweeping multigenerational family chronicle that can be read as a history of Texas and, by natural extension, of the American experience. But it's more than even that. In the small twists of fate and nature that buffet the extended Lewis-Mealer clan are reminders of the profound capriciousness of life, of how something as simple as a rain that doesn't come - or a weevil that does - can alter a family's fortunes forever. Masterful and deeply thought-provoking." --Scott Anderson, author of the New York Times bestselling Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East "THE KINGS OF BIG SPRING is the kind of epic tale we rarely see, the sprawling, multi-generation story of a single, hardscrabble working-class family, scrapping and clawing its way through dust storms, droughts and oilfields in its quest for a sliver of the American Dream. At a time when the national spotlight is rediscovering the plight of Middle American families, this book will never be more relevant. Think of it as a Texas version of ``Hillbilly Elegy.'' -- Bryan Burrough, New York Times bestselling author of THE BIG RICH and BARBARIANS AT THE GATE "In The Kings of Big Spring Bryan Mealer has written a mutigenerational saga as broad as the Texas landscape that forms its backdrop. With poignancy and warmth, Mealer's memoir traces his family from Appalachian hollows to the open ranges of the West. During hardscrabble years, they suffer through droughts, depression, and dust bowl years with tenacity, faith, and more than a bit of luck, and when their fortunes rise during the oil boom, their newfound wealth catapults them into a fleeting jet set lifestyle. At once heartbreaking and exhilarating, The Kings of Big Spring brings to life one family's quest for the American Dream with a Texas twist." -Jennifer Gromada, Labyrinth Books (Princeton, NJ) "Bryan Mealer incorporates extensive research presenting the story of his family while showcasing the history of West Texas during the Twentieth Century. The Kings of Big Spring portrays the oil industry, through both the good and bad years, wrapped in an intriguing saga spanning several generations of Texans." Martha Jarred, Henderson Book Store, owner "The Kings of Big Spring is the manual laborers' view of 20th century Texas economic history -- a tour de force unlike any Texas history I've ever read. Mealer reminds me of Carl Sandburg, Howard Zinn and John Steinbeck all rolled into one. -- Erwin McGee, Balcones Books (Austin, TX) "While this engrossing memoir is set in Texas for the most part, it is truly an American tale for everyone. From the first Europeans who set out for the New World, families have moved westward (or northward) for economic opportunities. The Mealers are one of these families. This is a wonderful story about a working class family in the 20th century. Highly recommended" --Valerie Koehler, Blue Willow Bookshop "If everything is bigger in Texas then so too is Texans' resilience, that ability to muscle through the cycles of boom and bust that seem inherent in the state's DNA.Bryan Mealer brings the mythical stature of twentieth century Texans to life with this history of four generations of his family. Theirs is a story of poverty and prayer; oil discoveries and ostentation--big personalities who live hard and take whatever fate delivers, with little regard for past misfortune or future uncertainty. Mealer's fascinating chronicle feels ripped from the pages of a Faulkner novel: colorful folks with ambition and egos as big as the Texas sky who, when the bottom falls out, curse their fate, seek the salve of redemption, and then simply move on." --Laurie Feathers, Interabang Books (Dallas, TX)

In the winter of 1981, Bryan Mealeds father, Bobby, receives a call from an old friend with a deviously simple question, 'How'd you like to be a millionaire?' Twenty-six, and with a young family, Bobby had left his home town of Big Spring in West Texas, a town of oil booms and busts, to seek his fortune away from the legacy of black gold his forefathers had chased. But now Big Spring's streets are flooded again with money and Texas T, a boom so big that 46% of the world's oil is bubbling up from west Texas soil and a fevered American dream has taken hold as fortune hunters pour in, oil rigs sprout up like dandelions in the field, and millionaires are minted each day. Grady Cunningham, Bobby's old friend, is one of the fresh kings of Big Spring. Flashy, loud, smart as a whip and richer than sin, Grady pulls Bobby Mealer and his young wife into his glamorous orbit. There's a cushy job for Bobby as VP of Grady's oil company, weekend jaunts to the Bahamas in private jets, shopping sprees in Paris and lost weekends in New Orleans. But beneath these glittering lives is a side of life as dark as the oil which pays for it. Drugs take hold, marriages crumble, accidents happen and most importantly, wells run dry. But the story starts over a hundred years ago, when Bryan's great grandfather left Appalachia to first venture West to seek his fortune. The heartaches, the triumphs, the pain and the pleasure that accompanies the booms and subsequent busts is keenly felt and endlessly repeated. In The Kings of Big Spring, Bryan Mealer has written an indelible portrait of a family through three generations of boom and bust, and a legacy of fortune and ruin as big as Texas itself.