Saving El Chico is an electric, character-driven novel with a clever plot and a sense of place so vivid you can feel yourself being whisked away to a charming town dying from drought, fading each day with the lack of rain. This desperation creates fertile ground for cheats and liars to offer false hope to El Chico. From Lulu Belle Swartz, owner of Be Lovely Boutique, to Ed Hawkins, proprietor of Ed's Salvage Yard and Golf Course, citizens struggle to survive. When the drought appears to be the final blow to the mainstay cattle ranching business and Bea McPherson's Circle McP Ranch, Ex-Dallas Cowboy football player Nicholas Graystone arrives offering to spearhead the building of a water pipeline. The unsuspecting residents don't realize their mayor has teamed with the fast talker to swindle them. Silver Crow Parker, the Texas Chairman of Indian Affairs, and Jake Johnson, foreman of the Circle McP Ranch, think there is an alternative solution to the drougth problem. Perhaps it is inevitable that El Chico will become another barren, forlorn Texas ghost town. As El Chico sinks deeper and deeper into oblivion, many citizens flee while others continue their fun-loving lifestyle with the belief if they pull together there will be a resolution to the hopeless situation. The rugged courage of its most dynamic residents will linger in our minds long after the book is closed.
