Born during the Great Depression, LIONEL GARCIA spent his early years with his grandfather on a ranch deep in the scrub country of South Texas. It is about his life in that hard-scrabble brush country that Garcia so beautifully writes. In addition to his fictionalized autobiography, I Can Hear the Cowbells Ring, Garcia has published four novels and three collections of stories. Brush Country is the first collection of poetry by this award- winning author.

"Brush Country captures the hardness of hard life in a hard land, and it does it about as well as anything I have ever seen. The manuscript works well as a whole. It is a threnody from start to finish; even the war death fits because that is a part of the experience, just as the death of the thrown rider. War death here seems merely one more working death in the harsh environment. The experience described has, it seems to me, nothing in common with East Texas or the South. Death is common enough to both, but Garcia's work derives wholly from the Southwest. Garcia, who grew up in Brush Country, has nailed it." --Phillip Parotti, author, The Greek Generals Talk, The Trojan Generals Talk