A novel of ambitions and desires thwarted in a small Texas town, 
Dancing with Lyndon brings the early 1950s to life. Living in a 
small conservative and racist town, Thomas Patterson, a stiff
young criminal lawyer, is running for state district judge and
hoping for endorsements from either the governor or young Lyndon
Johnson, who's running for the senate. Thomas's stay-at-home wife
and their teenaged son Tommy are satellites to his grandiose
political aspirations. But all hopes for a substantial political career
are dashed when a black client Thomas successfully defended
against a charge of the rape of a white girl kills himself, leaving a
note confessing to the crime. The town turns against the Patterson
family, jeering, threatening, and even vandalizing Thomas's car. The
menacing atmosphere only adds to the tensions escalating within
the family.

    Mary Lee, Thomas's dreamy, restless wife, can't quite grasp why
she is so unhappy but knows it has something to do with Thomas's
reliance on logic and reason to the exclusion of all emotion.
Impulsively, she seeks the advice of a gypsy woman who foretells
temptation, change, and someone to show her the way.

    Fourteen-year-old Tommy is caught between his parents' 
conflicting unspoken demands and struggles to make his own way
and his own decisions about life. As tensions mount, he
alternates between concern for his parents and the forbidden,
budding attraction he feels for the daughter of a gypsy woman.
 
    All the protagonists' desires and ambitions come to a head at a
barbecue where Lyndon Johnson is scheduled to speak. Thomas's
political career takes an unexpected turn, Mary Lee finally
understands where her desires can lead her, and Tommy comes to
see his parents in a new light.

_________________________________________________________

DONLEY WATT has lived in Texas most of his life. He has owned a
contemporary art gallery, been the dean of a community college,
and taught fiction writing at several universities. He is the author
of the short story collection, Can You Get There from Here?, which
won the Steven F. Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters
for the best first work of fiction in 1994. He also wrote the novels
The Journey of Hector Rabinal and Reynolds (TCU Press) and
two novellas titled Haley, Texas, 1959. He and his wife, Lynn, an
artist, live in San Antonio.


What people are saying about this book

"Dancing with Lyndon is charged with the ironies that define an era.
In this beautifully structured novel, Donley Watt has given us an
edgy portrait of small-town angst in post–World War II Texas. The
book is instructive and entertaining; it reacquaints the reader with
an almost forgotten aspect of American life. You can't ask a novel
to do much more than that."—Rick DeMarinis