John Willingham's new novel, The Last Woman, is under contract with TCU Press for release in 2025. He is also the author of the 2023 essay "Should We Forget the Alamo?: Myths, Slavery, and the Texas Revolution," published by Southwestern Historical Quarterly and cited by the Houston Chronicle and other publications.
"TCU Press publishes original, regional literary fiction...[and] has traditionally published the history and literature of Texas and the American West. As the press has grown steadily in stature and in its ability to bring credit to its parent university over the last sixty years, it has been praised for publishing regional fiction and for discovering and preserving local history."
The Last Woman: Almost eighty years old in 1939, Frenchy McGinnis has been the last woman in the dying cowtown of Tascosa, Texas, for two decades. Fiercely loyal to people who have vanished from her life, she is, by turns, re-living and reflecting on her past and that of other women for whom escape to the West was an act born of desperation.
Born Catherine Fleurot McCain in Baton Rouge, her life changes dramatically in 1877 when her best friend flees after being abused by a priest. Catherine leaves her drunken Cajun mother behind and follows her friend up the Mississippi River.
In Arkansas, she is accused of murder after fighting off a violent attacker and assumes the alias of Frenchy. Her rustic but mathematically gifted new friend, Mamie, accidentally becomes an accomplice. Escaping on a riverboat, they find in a game of chance the path to a hard-won freedom remarkable for two young women in the West. Meanwhile, a narcissistic preacher with a warped since of mission is tracking her down. Inspired by a true story.
Photo credit Carol M. Highsmith
"TCU Press publishes original, regional literary fiction...[and] has traditionally published the history and literature of Texas and the American West. As the press has grown steadily in stature and in its ability to bring credit to its parent university over the last sixty years, it has been praised for publishing regional fiction and for discovering and preserving local history."
The Last Woman: Almost eighty years old in 1939, Frenchy McGinnis has been the last woman in the dying cowtown of Tascosa, Texas, for two decades. Fiercely loyal to people who have vanished from her life, she is, by turns, re-living and reflecting on her past and that of other women for whom escape to the West was an act born of desperation.
Born Catherine Fleurot McCain in Baton Rouge, her life changes dramatically in 1877 when her best friend flees after being abused by a priest. Catherine leaves her drunken Cajun mother behind and follows her friend up the Mississippi River.
In Arkansas, she is accused of murder after fighting off a violent attacker and assumes the alias of Frenchy. Her rustic but mathematically gifted new friend, Mamie, accidentally becomes an accomplice. Escaping on a riverboat, they find in a game of chance the path to a hard-won freedom remarkable for two young women in the West. Meanwhile, a narcissistic preacher with a warped since of mission is tracking her down. Inspired by a true story.
Photo credit Carol M. Highsmith
There wasn’t one plot of ground in the whole town that she did not know, with or without the houses, businesses, and saloons that originally occupied the space; not one person who had lived in the town for any time at all had she forgotten, though she knew many of them only by the made-up names they’d used to scatter dust across their trails; and not many screams in the night, shouts of joy, songs sweet or bawdy, or gunshots fired to kill a man or graze the stars could she not recall, at least in her restless dreams.
Here is more Information about John' s op-eds, books, and essays.
John Willingham, 2022