CLICK HERE to read an excerpt (requires Adobe Acrobat reader)
                  

The Second Dune, Shelby Hearon’s second novel, was published 
in 1973 and won the Texas Institute of Letters Award as the best 
book of fiction of the year. Written when Hearon was forty-three 
and just before her divorce, the novel is seen from the point of 
view of suburban housewives and their mothers and daughters.
     
    Ellen Marshall, divorced and remarried, is troubled by her son’s 
refusal to accept her second husband, but takes great comfort from 
the five-year-old daughter of her second marriage. She hopes to be 
able to pass on to her daughter some of the knowledge that only 
women possess and to help little Ellen see that women need to 
break the bonds that society has forced upon them. As the narrator 
says early in the novel, "Raised by women, schooled by women, 
we who are mothers now were taught to look across the gulf to 
men and count ourselves as they counted us." Ellen hopes her 
daughter will be different just as she is slowly becoming different 
herself.

_________________________________________________________

SHELBY REED HEARON lives in Burlington, Vermont, but her 
novels always have a strong Texas setting. Hearon is author of 
fifteen novels and seventeen stories. The Second Dune is the 
second Shelby Hearon novel to be reprinted by TCU Press. The 
first was the excellent A Prince of a Fellow. Hearon’s most recent 
novel is Ella in Bloom, published by Knopf in 2000.


Number Thirty-four: Texas Tradition Series


What people are saying about this book

"I found it tender and moving—and very perceptive."—Joanne 
Woodward