Ron Rozelle's new novel, Touching Winter, is a four-part evocation of 
memory and place and the yearning for home. Each part of the novel 
begins with a meditation on one aspect of the protagonist's life as he 
watches the unpredictable weather of East Texas. When Will was a 
young boy, he and his grandfather enjoyed being out in the 
spectacular East Texas storms. These sessions taught Will many 
things about life—ranching, weather, character, how to be a man—
and bound Will to the family land and to his grandfather. Only at the 
ranch does Will feel like the person he was, or would like to be, before 
wrong decisions turned his life down an entirely different path.

    A powerful, early romance proved disastrous, and the relationship 
haunts him. To compensate for lost love, Will carved a niche for 
himself in the competitive concrete industry, inventing a technique to 
make mixing trucks more efficient and becoming wealthier than he 
could have dreamed. His marriage to a Houston socialite is thin and 
brittle, unsatisfying for his wife, Lauren, and for himself. Their daughter 
Aimee lives in California, as far away from her family as possible.

    As Will ages, he turns to the ranch as a place of clarity in times of 
crisis, eventually moving back there entirely. He exchanges the public 
life he and Lauren led in Houston for the simplicity of walks along the 
rustic fence, lunch with old friends at the town's only diner, and long 
evenings on the porch watching the stars. Along the way, a fierce, red-
breasted hawk comes to represent the spiritual for Will, and he is 
forced to face the consequences of earlier decisions.

_________________________________________________________

RON ROZELLE taught high school English for over twenty years 
before founding the creative writing program at St. Thomas High 
School in Houston. He currently teaches creative writing in the 
Brazosport School district. Rozelle's previous publications include The 
Windows of Heaven, an historical novel set during the Galveston 
Hurricane of 1900, and his memoir, Into That Good Night, a finalist for 
the PEN American West Creative Nonfiction Prize and the Texas 
Institute of Letters Carr P. Collins Nonfiction Award. Recipient of Image 
magazine's Artistic Merit Award, Rozelle lives in Lake Jackson, Texas, 
with his wife Karen and their daughters.