Appreciation: Elmer Kelton, celebrated Texan and author

When novelist Elmer Kelton died peacefully in his sleep last weekend, Texas lost one of its most beloved authors. He was the author of The Time It Never Rained, which one critic listed as one of the dozen or so best novels written by an American in the 20th century, and more than 60 other books. He garnered so many awards – seven Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, four Western Heritage (Wrangler) Awards from the National Cowboy Museum and Hall of Fame, lifetime achievement awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Western Literature Association – that his wife once confessed they were reduced to putting them in drawers. And the WWA voted him the "Best Western Writer of All Time." But to call Elmer's work Western diminishes writing that went far beyond the genre and the region to deal with universal themes. Elmer, who was a willing and popular speaker whenever asked, used to tell audiences he liked to take a character, put him in a time of change and transition and see what he did. Those times of change were almost always in Texas history, which his novels cover from the Texas Revolution to contemporary times...DallasMorningNews