The DFW Writer’s Workshop proudly claims bragging rights as the most successful read and critique practicum in north Texas. Organized in 1977, the membership has produced more than one hundred eighty published works. Two of its most prolific associates, Jack Ballas and John McCord, are well known to the Western Writers of America.

Three years ago an aspiring novelist named Henry Chappell strolled into the talent heavy group’s midst, and created an overnight sensation. He read from a stunning manuscript that recounted the bloody clash between whites and Comanches set in the 1873 Texas Panhandle region known as the Llano Estacado. His account of one of the most heartrending periods in American history welded listeners to their seats with the beauty of its language. Jack Ballas banged his pipe against his palm and said, “He’s the best I’ve heard in twenty-six-years—a writer’s writer. Puts the rest of us in the shade.”

Born in 1960 Louisville, Chappell grew up in the idyllic country town of Campbellsville, Kentucky, an area surrounded by hilly wooded farmland. As a youngster, he formed a deep love, and respect, for wild places and wide-open spaces while hunting behind his father’s pointers and setters.

Chappell played all the sports for boys in high school, and excelled at football. Upon graduation, he attended Western Kentucky University. In 1982, having taken a degree in electrical engineering, he moved to Dallas, and started a career in the defense industry’s electro-optics field. After settling in Plano with wife Jane, Henry spent weekends getting to know his new home by way of the hunting, fishing and birding it offered.

He admits a certain lack of enthusiasm for Texas during those first few years. “Didn’t care for the place much. Nothing like home, as far as I was concerned.” But the transplanted Kentuckian soon fell under the influence of John Graves, one of the Lone Star state’s best-known