Elizabeth Crook
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Elizabeth Crook

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Elizabeth Crook is the author of six novels, including The Night Journal, which received a Spur award from Western Writers of America; Monday, Monday, which received the Jesse H. Jones Award from The Texas Institute of Letters and was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2014; and The Which Way Tree, designated by the Texas State Library and Archives as the 2024 adult Great Read “to represent the state’s literary landscape” at the National Book Festival. Her recent book, The Madstone, was lauded in The Washington Post as “the perfect adventure to curl up with on some desolate winter night.” Crook has written for The Southwestern Historical Quarterly and Texas Monthly and is co-writer, with Stephen Harrigan, of the screenplay for The Which Way Tree, currently in development with Picturehouse and PantherDog LLC. She is a recipient of the Texas Book Festival’s Texas Writer Award, the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Texas Medal of Arts Award from the Texas Cultural Trust. Crook’s prose has been called “deftly rhythmic, often wry, and impeccably crafted” (Texas Monthly), “confident and lyrical” (Kirkus), her words "as carefully chosen as pearls on a matched necklace,” (USA Today) and holding “the sustained power of a drumbeat” (Houston Chronicle). Her various books have been described as “one of the most powerful anti-war statements,” (Houston Post, on Promised Lands); and a “ripping adventure with a show-stopping finale” (Wall Street Journal, on The Which Way Tree.) The Madstone, “a wonderfully transporting tale of love in the Old West” (People) is described in the Houston Chron as “tender, violent, funny, and, like just about everything Crook writes, drenched in Texas history—not the mythological kind, but a deeply researched dive into largely forgotten details and dark corners.” Crook was born in Houston and spent her childhood in Nacogdoches and San Marcos, Texas, with two years away during grade school when her father served under Lyndon Johnson as national director of VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) and as Ambassador to Australia. In San Marcos she attended public schools, then attended Baylor University for two years and graduated from Rice University in 1982. She currently lives in Austin with her husband, and has two grown children.
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The Which Way Tree

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