The Devil's Fingers & Other Personal Essays

In this wide-ranging essay collection, Hoggard (Riding the Wind), former poet laureate of Texas, explores subjects as diverse as the Hotter'n Hell Hundred (a 100-mile bicycle race through Texas, in August), the Battle of Marathon, flyfishing, Cuban politics, and the seemingly unyielding Devil's Fingers canyons in the Chihuahuan Desert. The first few essays are set in small-town Texas, but Hoggard soon takes readers to Paris, where he considers the city's landmarks and the history they represent. Hoggard is an avid runner and bicyclist, and often uses his exertions as a starting point for observation. "On runs and on paper I'm a wanderer," he writes, and his essays follow in the meandering tradition of Montaigne. One might begin with skeet shooting and end up considering "the frontier tradition of keeping distance from soft emotions." The weakest essays take this meandering to the extreme and become too diffuse, but the book's highlights blend motion, reflection, action, history, thought, and drive in surprising ways that will make readers reconsider how to move through this changing world. (May)