“[because this is texas] will knock your hat in the creek.”

The Dallas Morning News

A man walks free from two cold-blooded murders, acquitted by a jury of his peers.

"Why?" a reporter asks a juryman.

"Because this is Texas."

Written by a family descendant with exclusive access to private archives, Clara Sneed’s non-fiction account of the Sneed-Boyce feud—now published for the first time in book form—tells of a love affair so passionate it blinded the lovers to any mere commonsense concerns, of three families and a society consumed by the fallout, and of a marriage that ultimately survived adultery.

And those two murders.

Because This is Texas is a non-fiction account of the same dramatic story told in Sneed’s recently released historical fiction, Before We Turn to Dust (December 2024), a shocking and colloquial piece of literary Americana.