{"product_id":"book-cazr","title":"The Kings of Big Spring","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThis program is read by the author\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Think of it as a Texas version of \u003ci\u003eHillbilly Elegy.\" \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e— Bryan Burrough, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Big Reach\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eBarbarians at the Gate\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA brilliant audiobook saga of family, fortune, faith in Texas, where blood is bond and oil is king…\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 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?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwenty-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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGrady 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA masterwork of memoir and narrative history, \u003ci\u003eThe Kings of Big Spring\u003c\/i\u003e 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMore praise for\u003ci\u003e The Kings of Big Spring:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"With a Texas accent and a soft-spoken tone, Mealer recounts scenes of drinking and drugs, divorce, and tragedy...Mealer gives listeners a very personal history lesson, showing how changing times and economic cycles affect both a town and a family.\" — \u003ci\u003eAudioFile Magazine\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Mr. Mealer, who covered war in the Congo for the \u003ci\u003eAssociated Press \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eHarper’s\u003c\/i\u003e magazine, has impressive reporter’s chops as well as a native West Texan’s gift for storytelling. The combination produces the best kind of twofer: an engaging history of the oil patch wrapped in an intimate portrait of his own family.\" — \u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Macmillan Audio","offers":[{"title":"Audiobook","offer_id":49382516228400,"sku":"BDcazr","price":26.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0879\/2784\/9264\/files\/310831-cazr-Square.jpg?v=1735046977","url":"https:\/\/downpour.com\/products\/book-cazr","provider":"Downpour","version":"1.0","type":"link"}