Jane Gilmore Rushing

Who is Jane Gilmore Rushing?

Jane Gilmore Rushing was a Texan novelist and journalist, who formerly was a staff writer for the Abilene Reporter-News in Abilene, Texas. Her works are the subject of Jane Gilmore Rushing: A West Texas Writer and Her Work, a book by Lou Halsell Rodenberger, former professor of English at McMurry University in Abilene, Texas.

Rushing grew up in Pyron, a West Texas farming community now recognizable only by a cemetery and railroad sign. From childhood, she wanted to be a writer. In seven novels published between 1963 and 1984, she built her stories around themes that few West Texas writers had dared to tackle. Most of her work centers on cotton farms and early ranches in a land she calls the “too-late frontier.” Her plots explore such sensitive topics as an affair between a mulatto girl and a West Texas cowboy and the painful recognition in an early-nineteenth-century community that one of their own is capable of child and wife abuse. Lou Halsell Rodenberger explores Rushing’s life and discusses in depth her novels and memoir.