…this is my story, this is my song…
Susan Perry Benson
is the author of My Little Blue Branch: A Texas Memoir
published by Benson Tropical Press in March 2023.
Her debut memoir is available now at all major booksellers.
Praise for My Little Blue Branch: A Texas Memoir
“In My Little Blue Branch, Susan Perry Benson does for her family ranch in Central Texas what John Graves did for the Brazos River in his landmark book Goodbye to a River: celebrates nature (and human nature) with a graceful, exact, and unsentimental eye.
Also? It’s really funny.”
— Michael Parker, author of I Am the Light of This World and
2022 inductee to the Texas Institute of Letters.
Susan Perry Benson is a native Texan who grew up in West University Place, a suburb of Houston. She is a past contributor to the Houston Chronicle where she wrote personal essays for Texas Magazine and book reviews for Zest, Sunday supplements to the Chronicle. Her short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Shotgun Honey. Her essay, “Uncle War” was a finalist in Press 53’s Open Anthology Awards. She lives on a family farm outside of Raleigh, North Carolina with her husband Dan and gets back to Texas and the Blue Branch as often as she can.
Though marriage took her to a tobacco farm in North Carolina, Susan Perry Benson never forgot her Texas roots. In her memoir, My Little Blue Branch, she relives the halcyon days of her youth at the Blue Branch, the family ranch in Central Texas. Through oral history, old letters and personal experiences, her essay collection is told with warmth, empathy and humor, and explores the peaks and valleys of lives well lived despite some hardships along the way.
“If you grew up in Texas, you know that Texas is always in your blood. No matter how far you may travel, the eyes of Texas are upon you, all the livelong day. After thirty-plus years of marriage, Dan still likes to tell people that he had to sneak me across the state line in the dark of night. The truth is, I’m still tethered there.”
—Excerpt from Author’s Note in My Little Blue Branch