MR. TEXAS

An unknown West Texas cattle rancher is elected to the State House of Representatives and becomes a star.

The second novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist is totally different from his first, The End of October (2020), a thriller about bioterrorism that appeared right at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is also dramatically better. Tapping into his prodigious knowledge of and affection for the state of Texas, Wright gives us a novel about politics and people that at its best recalls classics like The Gay Place by Billy Lee Brammer and the work of Larry McMurtry. It begins when a powerful lobbyist named L.D. Sparks—“a silver-haired cynic in a gray western-cut suit and handmade boots”—shows up at the funeral of a longtime Democratic state rep, hoping to find a Republican who can take the seat. That turns out to be Sonny Lamb, who, with his wife, Lola, is barely keeping their herd going through the drought; they aren’t having much luck expanding their own family, either. An Iraq vet with a checkered past, a currently incarcerated father, and no college degree, Sonny nonetheless has the heart of a hero, as we learn when he rushes into a burning barn to save a little girl’s horse. The novel moves nimbly and amusingly through the campaign and Sonny’s early days in Austin, with highlights including a feral-hog hunt and a fertility clinic debacle. When the newly elected Rep. Lamb chooses to follow his own lights rather than “dance with the one who brung [him],” he incites the ire of L.D. and his cabal, who immediately kick off plans for his ruin. Wright’s prose is full of original and funny formulations—one character has “a smirk where his smile should be”; small towns between San Antonio and El Paso “[cling] to the interstate like ticks on a dog”; an obnoxious catfish farmer–turned-politico is “the brains behind the QAnon caucus,” which is so dry it crackles. Just a few complaints: The sections about Sonny’s plan to convert the wastewater produced by fracking into a solution for the drought sometimes seem to be turning into New Yorker articles, and the storyline about Sonny and Lola’s marital troubles is not convincing.

Wonderful characters, Texas-sized helpings of wit and insight, and, believe it or not, a vision of post-partisan redemption.