Below are the query letters and synopses that caught an editor's eye, resulting in the publication of my first two books, THE LH7 RANCH and TRAIL FEVER. You may find these examples useful.

(For more, schedule my "Anatomy of a Query" presentation for your writers group. See Programs and Talks.)

  DEBORAH LIGHTFOOT SIZEMORE
  P.O. Box 1234
  Smalltown, USA 56789

June 13, 199_

Dorothy Briley, Editor-in-Chief
Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books
105 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016

Dear Ms. Briley:

The trail-driving Texas cowboys who took 10 million cattle through wild country to Kansas in the late 1800s really were cow "boys," mostly in their teens. One of the best-known was George W. Saunders of San Antonio, Texas.

At 10, George rode in his first stampede. During the Civil War, he and a 13-year-old brother ran the family ranch while their father fought for the South. At 17, George took his first trail herd north. The trip had all the adventure he hoped for--storms, floods, Indian raids and midnight stampedes.

Quitting the trail at 32, George began a "roundup" to collect his fellow drovers' tales of adventure. "It would be the father of all mistakes to let their daring and valuable efforts be forgotten," he said. He had their stories published in THE TRAIL DRIVERS OF TEXAS (1925), a 1000-page book said to be the best single historical record of the trail-driving era. George Saunders' grandson told me it was the "bible" for Hollywood scriptwriters in the 1930s and '40s, who relied on it for cowboy vernacular and scene-setting.

My 15,500-word biography TRAIL FEVER for the 8-12 reader focuses on Saunders' boyhood and life as a young drover. It is based solidly upon fact, including George's firsthand accounts of his experiences published 70 years ago in such magazines as The Cattleman and Pioneer Magazine of Texas. The book in unfinished manuscript took second in the nonfiction category of the 1989 Texas-Wide Writers' Competition for both adult and juvenile works. I now have the complete manuscript ready to submit.

This biography fills a need librarians have expressed to me for historically accurate, unglamorized yet entertaining cowboy books, the kind kids can read for pleasure or the classroom. The book is a fast-paced, real-life adventure tale that offers the young reader insight into the birth of the American cowboy legend. Every child knows something about the hard-riding, slow-talking cowboy. Fewer understand the basis of the cowboy's lasting fame, or think of old-time trail drivers as real teenagers who tackled big jobs and succeeded by doing the best they could.

Enclosed is an outline and sample chapter for your consideration, plus information on my writing background. I've had many articles on the American West published and have written extensively for the national office, Boy Scouts of America. My book THE LH7 RANCH, a ranch history, is forthcoming from the University of North Texas Press. This is a simultaneous submission.

I hope you will agree TRAIL FEVER would make a good addition to your list of biographies. A self-addressed, stamped envelope is enclosed for your convenience in replying. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Deborah Lightfoot Sizemore
(Writing as D.J. Lightfoot)

Chapter 1. Stampede! The setting: South Texas. The year: 1864. Ten-year-old George Saunders is night-herding 200 steers. Something spooks the half-wild beeves. George chases the cattle through the night. Dawn finds him exhausted but safe, holding herd on a small bunch of the runaways. It's the 10-year-old's first stampede. It won't be his last.

Chapter 2. Movin' to Texas. Flashback to 1850. George's parents, Thomas and Elizabeth Saunders, pile their children and possessions into ox-drawn wagons and join a band of immigrants moving from Mississippi to Texas. The Saunders family homesteads at Rancho in Gonzales County, Texas. Here George is born on February 12, 1854, sixth child in a family of eleven.

Chapter 3. Findin' Lost Creek. In 1859, when Thomas Saunders moves his cattle operation 50 miles south to Lost Creek, George is only five years old but rides behind and helps keep up the tail end of the herd. Crossing the San Antonio River, some of the cattle are swept downstream; George acts fast to help gather the beeves as they struggle to the bank and climb to safety.

Chapter 4. Gone Fishin'. The family settles in on Lost Creek. For George, the wild country of his new home is a dream come true. Fish and game are plentiful; deer are everywhere. "We were in paradise," George thought. But it lasts only two years. In 1861 the Civil War breaks out, bringing an end to most happiness and all prosperity for the settlers.

Chapter 5. Gone to Fight. George's father and two oldest brothers go off to war, leaving George and Jack to care for the Saunders cattle. It's a time of hardship and poverty, when people must make all they need or use. For knives and forks, Elizabeth Saunders and the children whittle their own.

Chapter 6. Off to School. The Saunders men come home from the war and George is freed from some of his duties on the ranch. He starts to school at age 12, quits by 13. His schooling ends when the great northern trail drives begin. In his middle teens he helps put up the first trail herds that leave for the Kansas markets from his section of Texas.

Chapter 7. Up the 'Chizzum' Trail. In 1871, the peak year of the trail-driving era, 17-year-old George makes his first trip to Kansas. He is tested by midnight stampedes, raging thunderstorms, flood-swollen rivers and Indian raiders. He's caught trail fever.

Chapter 8. Rachel. Home from Kansas, George courts his sweetheart, Rachel Reeves, daughter of a neighboring cattleman. He stops off to see her on a cattle-trailing trip south to the Texas coastal packinghouses. The packeries are a less desirable market for Texas cattle, but nearer and a good backup in years of low prices on the northern markets. George dislikes the stinking, dirty meatpacking plants on the coast, but is pleased at the chance to see his sweetheart on his trips south.

Chapter 9. Bandits! George and Rachel marry and build their own ranch near Goliad. He rides with Captain Henry Scott's "minute men," helping protect ranchers and settlers from bandits and marauders. George also protects a local Mexican ranch family wrongfully accused of murdering whites.

Chapter 10. Bad Times in San Antone. In 1880, when he is 26, George must leave the ranch and take his family to San Antonio. Rachel is very ill and must be in the city for medical treatment. When she dies, George takes their two small daughters to stay with his parents in Goliad. He goes back on the trail.

Chapter 11. Drivin' to Dodge City. George makes his last three trail drives in 1884. In the spring of the year, driving a bunch of horses from San Antonio to Dodge City, Kansas, he faces hostile Indians, stampedes and swollen streams. In the searing heat of July, he takes a herd of cattle from West Texas on a dry drive across the desert to New Mexico.

Chapter 12. End of the Trail. His last trip is the roughest. In the winter of 1884 he drives 1,000 heifers from West Texas through New Mexico to Arizona. The drive is plagued by freezing weather and a dearth of water and grass for the cattle. The route leads through the land of Geronimo and the Apache, and the drovers must be constantly on guard. In December George reaches his goal with all the cattle, save five head lost in a bog.

George W. Saunders and The Trail Drivers of Texas. At 32, George quits the trail and becomes a San Antonio businessman. Still a cowboy at heart, he wants to make sure the trail-driving days are never forgotten. He collects tales of the trail and has them printed in a now-famous book, The Trail Drivers of Texas, recently reprinted by the University of Texas. In its pages live the things George loved best: "The old cow hoss, the squeak of saddle leather, the sweet scent of sagebrush, the thud of restive hooves, the smell of campfire smoke and boiling coffee, the old trail songs."

Bushick, Frank H. Glamorous Days. San Antonio, Texas: Naylor Company, 1934.

Dobie, J. Frank. A Vaquero of the Brush Country. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1981.

Hunter, J. Marvin, ed. The Trail Drivers of Texas. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1985. (An edition taken from the second edition revised, published in 1925 by Cokesbury Press.)

Hunter, J. Marvin, Sr. Peregrinations of a Pioneer Printer. Grand Prairie, Texas: Frontier Times Publishing House, 1954.

Dobie, J. Frank. "Veterans of Adventure." San Antonio Express, November 8, 1931, p. 1.

Hunter, J. Marvin. "The Trail Boss Passes On." Frontier Times, August 1933, pp. 481-84.

"Redskin's Death Recalls Bluff to Save Horses; How George Saunders Hood-winked Chief Bacon Rind 48 Years Ago Told in Book." San Antonio Express, April 3, 1932, pp. 1-4A.

Saunders, George W. "Cowboys and Cowponies." The Pioneer Magazine of Texas. April 1925, p. 13.

__________________. "More Lore of Cattle Trails." The Cattleman. September 1926, pp. 35-37.

__________________. "Over the Chisholm Trail in the 60's; A True Story of the Early Days." The Cattleman, March 1915, pp. 29-30.

__________________. "Reflections on the Trail." The Pioneer Magazine of Texas, April 1922, pp. 14-15; May 1922, pp. 20-22.

__________________. "The Difference Between a Cowboy and a Cow-Puncher." The Pioneer Magazine of Texas, October 1922, p. 11.

__________________. "The Old Trail." The Cattleman, March 1918, pp. 143-47.

  DEBORAH LIGHTFOOT SIZEMORE
  P.O. Box 1234
  Smalltown, USA 56789

 
January 22, 199_

Frances B. Vick
Director
UNT Press
P.O. Box 13856
Denton, Texas 76203-3856

Dear Ms. Vick:

The LH7 Ranch in western Harris County has existed since 1907 in the shadow of one of Texas' largest cities. Before urban sprawl cost him most of his land, founder Emil H. Marks used the ranch's location near Houston to his advantage.

For 30 years the LH7 Ranch Rodeo drew thousands of urban visitors, who also came by the droves to see Marks' herd of pure Texas Longhorns. Dismissed by most modern ranchers as a relic from the past, the Longhorn in the early part of the 20th century found the LH7 one of its last refuges.

My manuscript THE LH7 RANCH IN HOUSTON'S SHADOW tells the colorful story of the LH7 Ranch and the Marks family, particularly E.H. Marks. Based on primary sources including personal interviews, unpublished materials and ranch archives, and also drawing from contemporary newspaper and magazine reports, the book recounts the struggle of this unique Texas ranch against the intemperate Gulf Coast climate, the economic disaster of the Great Depression and, finally, the conflict with metropolitan Houston.

Because of its setting and approach to its subject, LH7 is unlike most other ranch histories:

The setting is unusual--a ranch brushing up against a major city. Rural life and urban demands inevitably collide.

The approach is different, centering more on the family than on ranch operations. This is not a formalized business history. More significant than ranch business per se are the forceful and colorful personalities of E.H. Marks and his family, personalities that shaped the LH7 into a Houston recreational attraction and helped ensure the survival of the old-time Texas Longhorn.

The role of women in the book also is significant. Maud Marks and her two daughters were full participants in ranch life. Both girls rode in roundups and worked the spring brandings. The youngest inherited the core of the original LH7 and continues to run Texas Longhorns on land overshadowed by Houston high-rises.

The manuscript is addressed to a broad readership: historians, Houstonians, students of the Texas cattle business, ranchers and agriculturists, folklorists, the general public. A synopsis is attached. I'm not aware of any competing books.

My degree is in agricultural journalism; I've been writing professionally, full time, since 1981 and specialize in ranching and Texas ranch history. Of the 60-odd magazine articles I've had published, a third have had to do with Texas Longhorns. I'm enclosing a summary of my writing and editing work.

I believe THE LH7 RANCH IN HOUSTON'S SHADOW would be an appropriate book for the University of North Texas Press and would be pleased to send sample chapters or the complete manuscript for your consideration. A self-addressed, stamped envelope is enclosed for your convenience in replying.

Thanks for your time and attention.

Sincerely,
 

Deborah Lightfoot Sizemore

Enc:    3-pg. synopsis, THE LH7 RANCH IN HOUSTON'S SHADOW
            Publishing history, D.L. Sizemore
            SASE

Chapter 1 - August Texas. Born August 15, 1843, as his family sailed from Prussia to the Republic of Texas, August Texas Marks settled at Addicks, near Houston. After Marks' death in 1891, the youngest of his five children, 9-year-old Emil Henry, was raised by an aunt and uncle who had a big cattle spread on the Brazos River. There E.H. Marks learned "the cow business."

Chapter 2 - Prairie Poetry. Young Marks got his education on the prairie. He grew up studying steers from the back of a horse and memorizing Western ballads at night. The poetry, the tall tales, the rough tunes Marks heard around the campfire were stamped indelibly on his memory. He learned to recite cowboy poems by the dozens, one after another for hours without pause or lapse.

Chapter 3 - The Addicks Years. Marks registered the LH7 brand in Harris County in 1898 when he was 17 years old. After a trip to the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, he returned to the family home at Addicks to court a beauty named Maud May Smith. They were married in 1907 and, with 63 acres of grass west of Houston and a few Texas Longhorn cattle, Marks established the LH7 Ranch.

Chapter 4 - Barker Rancher. In 1917 Marks sold the Addicks land and purchased a section of virgin prairie at Barker, three miles west. The LH7 became one of the first Gulf Coast ranches to raise Brahman cattle from India, crossing them with Longhorns. By the early 1930s the LH7 was one of the largest beef cattle operations on the Gulf Coast: 6,670 head running on 36,000 acres.

Chapter 5 - Brauhauser and Henry Ford. Marks was different from the stern and clannish German countryfolk of West Harris County. "He went across the creek and got acquainted with the rest of the world," as one daughter phrased it. In early model Ford and Dodge automobiles, the Markses traveled from Texas through the western states to California and north to Wyoming and Montana.

Chapter 6 - Maud. Maud May Smith Marks was born March 10, 1887, at Blue Earth, Minnesota. She was 12 when her family moved to Texas and 20 when she married E.H. Maud supported the efforts of county agents and home economists to improve rural life. She saw to it that her children were exposed to Houston culture and the celebrated artists of the day: Galli-Curci, Pavlova, Rubinstein.

Chapter 7 - Real Cowboys and Rodeos. Branding day on the LH7 drew cowboys from neighboring spreads and spectators from Houston. The branding party quickly grew from neighborhood event into a nationally known two-day rodeo held on the ranch for 30 years.

Chapter 8 - Danger on the Range. Blizzards, hurricanes, droughts, tornadoes, electrical storms, poisonous plants, bogs, mosquitoes, ticks--nature had many ways to injure cattle on the coastal plains. The LH7 also was visited by dangerous humans--Raymond Hamilton, crony of Bonnie and Clyde, possibly among them.

Chapter 9 - Delirium and Depression. The Great Depression ended the LH7's glory days. Cattle prices plummeted. A partnership dissolution in January 1936 cost Marks everything except a few Longhorns and the 1,008 acres he owned outright. It was the end of the LH7 as one of the largest ranches in Southeast Texas.

Chapter 10 - LH7 Longhorns. Most 20th century ranchers dismissed the Texas Longhorn as a remnant of a past age. Fearing they faced extinction, Marks spent decades gathering good examples of old-time Texas cattle to keep the breed alive. Over the years, one hand-picked specimen at a time, he built one of the finest and largest herds in the nation of authentic Texas Longhorns.

Chapter 11 - In the City's Shadow. In the 1940s and 1950s, to protect booming, industrialized Houston from flooding along Buffalo Bayou, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took a big bite out of the LH7 Ranch. The condemned land included the LH7 Rodeo grounds, forcing Marks to close the show after a 30-year run.

Chapter 12 - The Last Trail. Marks, age 70, and LH7 ranch foreman John Warnasch, accompanied by two others, made the first Salt Grass Trail Ride in January 1952. The ride started one of Houston's most enduring traditions, reenacted each February to kick off the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Well into his 80s, Marks continued to ride horseback, work cattle, and go to the mountains on annual hunting trips. He died in Houston on September 15, 1969, a few weeks before his 88th birthday.