Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse (Landmarks)

Thanks to the classic Dolly Parton film The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and ZZ Top’s ode “La Grange,” many people think they know the story of the infamous Chicken Ranch. The reality is more complex, lying somewhere between heartbreaking and absurd. For more than a century, dirt farmers and big-cigar politicians alike rubbed shoulders at the Chicken Ranch, operated openly under the sheriff’s watchful eye. Madam Edna Milton and her girls ran a tight, discreet ship that the God-fearing people of La Grange tolerated if not outright embraced. That is, until a secret conspiracy enlisted an opportunistic reporter to bring it all crashing down on primetime television. Drawn from exclusive interviews and expanded with newly uncovered information, Jayme Lynn Blaschke’s revelatory exposition of the Ranch illuminates the truth and lies surrounding this iconic brothel.

Jayme Blaschke grew up less than twenty miles from the former Chicken Ranch and heard stories about it his entire life. He was the only person to conduct extensive interviews with former Madam Edna Milton Chadwell prior to her death in 2012. Mr. Blaschke's fiction and nonfiction writing appears in Electric Velocipede, Cross Plains Universe, San Marcos Mercury and more. He earned his BA in journalism at Texas A&M University and studied fine art photography at Texas State University.