Borrow it
Coverart for item
The Resource The kings of Big Spring : God, oil, and one family's search for the American Dream, Bryan Mealer

The kings of Big Spring : God, oil, and one family's search for the American Dream, Bryan Mealer

Creator
Summary
This program is read by the author "Think of it as a Texas version of Hillbilly Elegy."--Bryan Burrough, New York Times bestselling author of The Big Reach and Barbarians at the Gate. A brilliant audiobook saga of family, fortune, faith in Texas, where blood is bond and oil is king...In 1892, Bryan Mealer's great-grandfather leaves the Georgia mountains and heads west into Texas, looking for wealth and adventure in the raw and open country. But his luck soon runs out. Beset by drought, the family loses their farm just as the dead pastures around them give way to one of the biggest oil booms in American history. They eventually settle in the small town of Big Spring, where fast fortunes are being made from its own reserves of oil. For the next two generations, the Mealers live on the margins of poverty, laboring in the cotton fields and on the drilling rigs that sprout along the flatland, weathering dust and wind, booms and busts, and tragedies that scatter them like tumbleweed. After embracing Pentecostalism during the Great Depression, they rely heavily on their faith to steel them against hardship and despair. But for young Bobby Mealer, the author's father, religion is only an agent for rebellion. In the winter of 1981, when the author is seven years old, Bobby receives a call from an old friend with a simple question, "How'd you like to be a millionaire? "Twenty-six, and with a wife and three kids, Bobby had left his hometown to seek a life removed from the blowing dust and oil fields, and to find spiritual peace. But now Big Spring's streets are flooded again with roughnecks, money, and sin. Boom chasers pour in from the busted factory towns in the north. Drilling rigs rise like timber along the pastures, and poor men become millionaires overnight. Grady Cunningham, Bobby's friend, is one of the newly-minted kings of Big Spring. Loud and flamboyant, with a penchant for floor-length fur coats, Grady pulls Bobby and his young wife into his glamorous orbit. While drilling wells for Grady's oil company, they fly around on private jets and embrace the honky-tonk high life of Texas oilmen. But beneath the Rolexes and Rolls Royce cars is a reality as dark as the crude itself. As Bobby soon discovers, his return to Big Spring is a backslider's journey into a spiritual wilderness, and one that could cost him his life. A masterwork of memoir and narrative history, The Kings of Big Spring is an indelible portrait of fortune and ruin as big as Texas itself. In telling the story of four generations of his family, Bryan Mealer also tells the story of how America came to be. More praise for The Kings of Big Spring: "Bryan Mealer has given us a brilliant, and brilliantly entertaining, portrayal of family, and a bursting-at-the-seams chunk of America in the bargain."--Ben Fountain, bestselling author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk"John Steinbeck meets J.R. Ewing in "The Kings of Big Springs," a hardscrabble chronicle spanning a century of one family's West Texas pursuit of the American dream. Austin writer Bryan Mealer has crafted an irresistible family history....What follows is a multigenerational struggle against powerful forces, from searing droughts to devious bankers, played out against a background of earth-shattering historical events, including two world wars and the Great Depression."
Language
eng
Work
Publication
Edition
Unabridged.
Extent
1 online resource (1 sound file (09 hr., 42 min., 14 sec.))
Isbn
9781427293480
Instance
Label
The kings of Big Spring : God, oil, and one family's search for the American Dream
Title
The kings of Big Spring
Title remainder
God, oil, and one family's search for the American Dream
Statement of responsibility
Bryan Mealer
Creator
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
This program is read by the author "Think of it as a Texas version of Hillbilly Elegy."--Bryan Burrough, New York Times bestselling author of The Big Reach and Barbarians at the Gate. A brilliant audiobook saga of family, fortune, faith in Texas, where blood is bond and oil is king...In 1892, Bryan Mealer's great-grandfather leaves the Georgia mountains and heads west into Texas, looking for wealth and adventure in the raw and open country. But his luck soon runs out. Beset by drought, the family loses their farm just as the dead pastures around them give way to one of the biggest oil booms in American history. They eventually settle in the small town of Big Spring, where fast fortunes are being made from its own reserves of oil. For the next two generations, the Mealers live on the margins of poverty, laboring in the cotton fields and on the drilling rigs that sprout along the flatland, weathering dust and wind, booms and busts, and tragedies that scatter them like tumbleweed. After embracing Pentecostalism during the Great Depression, they rely heavily on their faith to steel them against hardship and despair. But for young Bobby Mealer, the author's father, religion is only an agent for rebellion. In the winter of 1981, when the author is seven years old, Bobby receives a call from an old friend with a simple question, "How'd you like to be a millionaire? "Twenty-six, and with a wife and three kids, Bobby had left his hometown to seek a life removed from the blowing dust and oil fields, and to find spiritual peace. But now Big Spring's streets are flooded again with roughnecks, money, and sin. Boom chasers pour in from the busted factory towns in the north. Drilling rigs rise like timber along the pastures, and poor men become millionaires overnight. Grady Cunningham, Bobby's friend, is one of the newly-minted kings of Big Spring. Loud and flamboyant, with a penchant for floor-length fur coats, Grady pulls Bobby and his young wife into his glamorous orbit. While drilling wells for Grady's oil company, they fly around on private jets and embrace the honky-tonk high life of Texas oilmen. But beneath the Rolexes and Rolls Royce cars is a reality as dark as the crude itself. As Bobby soon discovers, his return to Big Spring is a backslider's journey into a spiritual wilderness, and one that could cost him his life. A masterwork of memoir and narrative history, The Kings of Big Spring is an indelible portrait of fortune and ruin as big as Texas itself. In telling the story of four generations of his family, Bryan Mealer also tells the story of how America came to be. More praise for The Kings of Big Spring: "Bryan Mealer has given us a brilliant, and brilliantly entertaining, portrayal of family, and a bursting-at-the-seams chunk of America in the bargain."--Ben Fountain, bestselling author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk"John Steinbeck meets J.R. Ewing in "The Kings of Big Springs," a hardscrabble chronicle spanning a century of one family's West Texas pursuit of the American dream. Austin writer Bryan Mealer has crafted an irresistible family history....What follows is a multigenerational struggle against powerful forces, from searing droughts to devious bankers, played out against a background of earth-shattering historical events, including two world wars and the Great Depression."
Accompanying matter
technical information on music
Cataloging source
TEFOD
http://library.link/vocab/creatorName
Mealer, Bryan
Dewey number
976.4/858
Form of composition
not applicable
Format of music
not applicable
LC call number
F391.3
LC item number
.M43 2018
Literary text for sound recordings
biography
Music parts
not applicable
PerformerNote
Read by the author
http://library.link/vocab/subjectName
  • Mealer, Bryan
  • Big Spring (Tex.)
  • Petroleum industry and trade
  • Texas
Transposition and arrangement
not applicable
Label
The kings of Big Spring : God, oil, and one family's search for the American Dream, Bryan Mealer
Instantiates
Publication
Antecedent source
unknown
Capture and storage technique
unknown
Carrier category
online resource
Carrier category code
  • cr
Carrier MARC source
rdacarrier
Color
not applicable
Configuration of playback channels
unknown
Content category
spoken word
Content type code
  • spw
Content type MARC source
rdacontent
Control code
on1022266502
Dimensions
  • not applicable
  • unknown
Edition
Unabridged.
Extent
1 online resource (1 sound file (09 hr., 42 min., 14 sec.))
File format
unknown
Form of item
online
Groove width / pitch
not applicable
Isbn
9781427293480
Kind of cutting
not applicable
Kind of disc cylinder or tape
not applicable
Kind of material
unknown
Level of compression
unknown
Media category
computer
Media MARC source
rdamedia
Media type code
  • c
Other physical details
digital
http://library.link/vocab/ext/overdrive/overdriveId
6da78336-c81a-4262-bb40-1c0c393803a6
Quality assurance targets
not applicable
Reformatting quality
unknown
Sound
sound
Special playback characteristics
digital recording
Specific material designation
  • other
  • remote
Speed
other
System control number
(OCoLC)1022266502
Tape configuration
not applicable
Tape width
not applicable
Label
The kings of Big Spring : God, oil, and one family's search for the American Dream, Bryan Mealer
Publication
Antecedent source
unknown
Capture and storage technique
unknown
Carrier category
online resource
Carrier category code
  • cr
Carrier MARC source
rdacarrier
Color
not applicable
Configuration of playback channels
unknown
Content category
spoken word
Content type code
  • spw
Content type MARC source
rdacontent
Control code
on1022266502
Dimensions
  • not applicable
  • unknown
Edition
Unabridged.
Extent
1 online resource (1 sound file (09 hr., 42 min., 14 sec.))
File format
unknown
Form of item
online
Groove width / pitch
not applicable
Isbn
9781427293480
Kind of cutting
not applicable
Kind of disc cylinder or tape
not applicable
Kind of material
unknown
Level of compression
unknown
Media category
computer
Media MARC source
rdamedia
Media type code
  • c
Other physical details
digital
http://library.link/vocab/ext/overdrive/overdriveId
6da78336-c81a-4262-bb40-1c0c393803a6
Quality assurance targets
not applicable
Reformatting quality
unknown
Sound
sound
Special playback characteristics
digital recording
Specific material designation
  • other
  • remote
Speed
other
System control number
(OCoLC)1022266502
Tape configuration
not applicable
Tape width
not applicable

Subject

Genre

Library Locations

    • Staff LibraryBorrow it
      507 NW Wall Street, Bend, OR, 97703, US
      44.056350 -121.317590

Library Links

Structured data from the Bibframe namespace is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License by Deschutes Public Library. Additional terms may apply to data associated with third party namespaces.