Dallas Uncovered 2ed

Dallas. Think the word, and feel the powerful vastness, the endless legends, wrapped in a spirit of innovation that shaped the American frontier. This spirit thrives today in one of the world's favorite cities.
   From the lone rancher gazing across flat terrain to the entrepreneur looking out of a tower of dark glass and glistening steel, Dallas has come to represent America's maverick city. Dallas is bigger, brasher, and glitzier than other cities and proud of it. You don't have to be well-bred or well-educated to make it in Dallas, but you do have to be brave. If it's new and different, Dallas will try it.
   In a mere five generations, Dallas sprang from a small group of primitive cabins on a muddy riverbank to a huge, sprawling city of skyscrapers and modern offices that rise out of the prairie like a high-tech mirage, visible for miles. It has often been said that the people who settled this area known as "Dallas" pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps.
   Certainly, it was no accident that the two major railroads crossed here in the 1800s and that Dallas, without any oil fields of its own, managed to become the financial center of the Southwest, generating funds for oil exploration and development of the vast petroleum industry. Likewise, it was not by chance that Dallas became a major aviation hub with the second busiest airport in the world, the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, providing travelers with three-hour connections to any city in the continental U.S.
   With dreams of greatness, the men and women of Dallas visualized the future. They struggled, fought, and worked, risking their lives and fortunes. Often in their battles, they lost and failed, but even in defeat, they never gave up their vision of a great city in this raw, untamed land known as Dallas, Texas.

Larenda Roberts
E-published Night Terrors (Kindle Direct Publishing, 2011), a literary novel, the story of a New Yorker who marries into a prominent, mysterious coffee family in southern Louisiana.  Second novel, The Outlaw's Song (to be e-published 2012) chronicles the moral struggle of Rachel Arnold, a wealthy Palo Alto homemaker who falls in love with a San Quentin prisoner through her church prison ministry. 
Published three nonfiction books:  Exploring New Orleans (Seaside Press, div. Wordware Publishing, 1998); San Francisco Uncovered (Wordware, 1996); and Dallas Uncovered (Wordware, 1994; 2nd edition 1998).  Short fiction published in the New Delta Review, Lake Effect Magazine, and Christian Woman (5).   Short fiction, "Swamp Man," won first place in the Palo Alto Weekly Annual Short Fiction Contest (1989). 
Published in Pepperdine Voice, Gospel Advocate, San Francisco Examiner, Baton Rouge Advocate, Plano Star Courier (weekly humor column for one year), Menlo Park Almanac, and Palo Alto Daily News.  Feature articles (4) published in the Palo Alto Weekly; regular contributor to Christian Woman (10 feature articles, 5 short fiction) and Power for Today. 
Currently serves as Advancement Writer at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA.