[1] McMutry tried to sell the book to Simon and Schuster who rejected it but it was picked up by Encino Press.
McMutry later wrote the book got his publishers in "trouble with the local literary establishment... mainly because I wrote an essay about the work of the hitherto unassailable idols trio: Roy Bedichek, Walter Prescott Webb, and, of course, J. Frank Dobie.
But I did point out that their writings were not entirely without flaw which was heresy in Texas at that time.
"[2] McMutry called the book a "kind of summing up of what I had observed during the passing of the rural way: the way of my father and mother and their people.
"[3] Reviewing a 2018 reissue Kirkus wrote " McMurtry’s essays from a half-century ago possess enduring relevance...