Catholicism in the American West: A Rosary of Hidden Voices (review)

438Southwestern Historical QuarterlyApril lents in German and Polish communities. The jazz program established at the University of North Texas in 1947 has trained numerous musicians and contributed to a thriving live music scene in Denton. Dallas's Deep Ellum district in the early 1 900s was a proving ground for seminal blues artists like Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker, and in much later days provided tutelage to Jimmy and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Finally, long-running programs like Austin City Limits and die Kerrville Folk Festival have exhibited Texas music to a wider world. Some minor quibbles with this book predictably involve who should be classified as a Texas musician. Hartman makes a good case for rock and roll founder Bill Haley given his obvious debt to Western swing as a Pennsylvania bandleader in the late '40s and his down-and-out death in Harlingen in 1981. Not so convincing is die inclusion of rockers Stephen Stills, Sly Stone, and Don Henley, all of whom were born in Texas, but are more closely associated with California. Buck Owens is in the same category, despite his ongoing influence on a host of Austin-based musicians like the Derailers and Jesse Dayton. But how about some coverage of Elvis, whose numerous Texas gigs during his early days on the Louisiana Hayride gave him invaluable experience and directly encouraged youths like Buddy Holly? The late, great Doug Sahm sang that "youjust can't live in Texas if don't have a lot of soul." Gary Hartman has written a book of undeniable excellence that explains why Texas music is such an essential expression of this state's history and soul. Lone Star College-KingwoodStephen Davis Catholicism in the American West: A Rosary of Hidden Voices. Edited By Roberto R. Treviño and Richard V. Francaviglia. Introduction By Steven M. Avella. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. Pp. 184. Preface, introduction , list ofcontributors. ISBN 9781585446216, $29.95 cloth.) A reviewer of books on history sometimes is asked to assess a tome that, in his or her reading of the work, emerges as not only a significant contribution to the world of scholarship, but is also a piece ofwriting compelling to read. This is the experience the present reviewer enjoyed as he probed the substance of Catholicism in the American West: A Rosary ofHidden Voices. Father Steven M. Avella, author of the publication's introduction, and the six contributors to the book have given readers a penetrating picture of aspects of the recent past and the Catholic presence not only in the Southwest, but the entire American West. The six essays make an outstanding effort to enlighten a nationwide readership mainly exposed to publications that offer weak coverage of Catholicism. This is particularly true where books fail to give enough attention to Catholic life as it has grown beyond the Hispanic heritage in the American Southwest and the West in general in more recent years. The work focuses on not only ethnic history , but also highlights personages, movements, and other themes that have received little attention from the public as well as within the Catholic world. This book grew from lectures that four of the contributors offered on March 20ogBook Reviews439 1 1 , 2004, at the Thirty-ninth Annual Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures meeting held at the University of Texas at Arlington. The first essay in the publication , "The Invisible Flock: Catholicism in the American West," came from Anne M. Buder, a Trustee Professor (emeritus) at Utah State University. Of particular interest to Texas readers is that she is an expert on Mother Margaret Mary Healy-Murphy, founder of the Sisters of the Holy Spirit in San Antonio. Father Michael Engh, a Jesuit professor and dean of the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts at Loyola-Marymount University, Los Angeles, wrote the second essay, a brilliant study entitled "From the City of the Angels to the Parishes of San Antonio: Catholic Organizations, Women Activists, and Racial Intersections. 1900-50." This essay contains information of particular interest to Texans on the roles of Robert Lucey, as Bishop ofAmarillo and Archbishop of San Antonio, and Verona Spellmire, in founding the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine in Texas...