The Dallas Women's Guide To Gold-Digging With Pride: A Novel

“Here, in the land of conspicuous consumption, marriage isn’t considered a lifelong commitment. It’s the ultimate accessory.”
–from The Dallas Women’s Guide to Gold-Digging with Pride


Jennifer Barton’s life has veered 180 degrees. A transplanted New Yorker now in a Lone Star state of mind, she’s ditched her urban hipster look for the waxed, Botoxed, and blond glow of the Dallas women she now walks among and mingles with.

Jenny’s mission: to be in “tall cotton,” which in Texan husband-hunting terms means sporting a major rock on your finger and seeing the prenup torn up before you walk down the aisle. But learning the local lingo is only the tip of the cactus for Jenny, who is used to picking men based on attraction and long-term compatibility, not net assets. No matter that in Dallas, a husband is “like a Hermès bag or a Chanel coat, a good investment that will mature over time. If he no longer fits, you can trade up to a more luxurious model.”

To Aimee, Jenny’s pretty-as-a-beauty queen roommate (and an expert gold-digger), marrying for material worth is gospel–she’s already successfully managed her first divorce and is on the lookout for husband number two. Jenny has laughed off Aimee’s ideas on flirting and courting (“Never directly engage a man you’re interested in”), but after catching her boyfriend cheating and listening to her mother’s constant laments over her lack of grandchildren, Jenny reconsiders Aimee’s businesslike approach to marriage: plan, strategize, conquer.

Under Aimee’s guidance, Jenny finds herself grocery shopping in stilettos, attending skeet shoots and rattlesnake hunts, and traversing the ultimate husband-hunting ground–a Baptist wedding. But in between secretly decoding her targets’ e-mail passwords and breaking into potential mates’ houses to figure out what their interests are, Jenny wonders if love ever enters into the deal.

Welcome to Dallas, where the higher the hair the closer to God. Grab the steer by the horns and sharpen your nails, J. C. Conklin’s hilariously funny debut novel will have you going Texas wild!

J. C. Conklin is a former Wall Street Journal and Dallas Morning News reporter. Conklin is the co-author of Comeback Moms: How to Leave Work, Raise Children, and Jump-Start Your Career Even If You Haven’t Had a Job in Years, and the co-founder of the movie production company Texas Avenue Films. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband, Kim, her son, Columbus, and her two Papillions, Navette and Ruby. It was as a lowly writer in Dallas that she discovered the cutthroat world of husband-hunting. Never get in the way of a single woman turning thirty in Texas–you’ll have permanent scars.