Head for the Hills – Special Guest Meg Benjamin

Welcoming back to Happy Endings, Meg Benjamin!

HEAD FOR THE HILLS

All three of the books I’ve published with Samhain (with number four coming out in July) have been set in a small and thoroughly mythical town called Konigsburg in the Texas Hill Country. Now Texans, which I used to be, know all about the Hill Country. It’s one of the most popular tourist destinations in the state. But most non-Texans have no idea where it is or even what it is. So I sometimes find myself explaining the whole area, although trying to explain it is a little like trying to explain a good sangiovese—some things are just better experienced. So, anyway, if you’re reading Wedding Bell Blues (out in print next week) and wondering what’s going on, here’s a quick rundown.

The Texas Hill Country is located northwest of San Antonio and slightly west of Austin. The hills in question are limestone, which means they have interesting contours, caves, and natural canyons carved by rivers like the Guadalupe. Highway 281 runs along the backbone of the Hill Country, from San Antonio to, more or less, Fort Worth. But it’s more fun to take some of the scenic byways that twist and turn through those limestone hills—I personally recommend the Willow City Loop outside Fredericksburg. In a good wildflower year, you can see fields of bluebonnets so thick they look like lakes in the distance (you’ll probably see them in a traffic jam of other cars full of people who want to see them, but that’s Spring in South Texas).

The thing that really makes the Hill Country worth visiting, though, are the towns. Fredericksburg, Marble Falls, Boerne, Gruene, Comfort, Johnson City, Blanco, Mason, etc., etc., etc. Most of them rely on tourism for at least part of their economies, which means good restaurants, quaint bed and breakfasts, and, these days, wineries. The limestone soil of the Hill Country is ideal for wine-making and the Hill Country has a high concentration of the state’s wineries and a lot of its vineyards. Long Time Gone, which comes out this July, features heroine whose family owns a Konigsburg winery.

Beyond their amenities, though, these Hill Country towns also won my heart by being, well, contrary. Texas is a big place. North Texas is different geographically and culturally from South Texas, East Texas and West Texas. The Hill Country, however, has a long-standing history of cussedness. Hill Country Freethinkers from Comfort tried to join the Union Army in the Civil War (and were slaughtered by Confederate Texans for trying). Hill Country Lutherans bucked the trend of other counties dominated by Baptists by embracing viticulture and fine dining. Hill Country merchants are as likely to speak German as Spanish, and these days are quite likely to speak both.

My favorite Hill Country story comes from the time the DH and I stayed in a small Hill Country town one weekend. We were looking for a particular winery we’d heard about—very hard to locate but supposedly well worth the effort. We found them in the middle of town; in fact, we stayed in a bed and breakfast cabin they owned next door. The winery manager told us the restaurant attached to the winery was the best in town, and he advised us to come early to dinner “because we get really busy later on.” We came over around six and ordered our food. The waiter handed us the wine list. We stared at him. The county was supposed to be dry. He explained that since the restaurant was attached to the winery we could order a bottle (but not a glass) of wine with dinner from the winery store. The Texas legislature, in one of its more interesting moments, had decided that wineries could serve wine on the premises. The restaurant was more or less on the winery premises. And since the winery was quite small, they sold wine from all the other Texas wineries in the region along with their own. We ordered a bottle and sat back to watch. By seven the place was packed with citizens, all with bottles of wine and nachos or anticuchos or quesadillas. The citizens of the county, which extended a ways beyond the town, had decided to save everyone’s moral character by making alcohol illegal. The citizens of the town had decided they didn’t want to be saved and had found a perfectly legal way around it.

So now when you read about Konigsburg in Venus In Blue Jeans or Wedding Bell Blues or Be My Baby or Long Time Gone, you’ll know, sort of, where I’m coming from. Viva the Hill Country!

Meg Benjamin is a former Texan, now living in Colorado. Her books for Samhain include Venus In Blue Jeans, Wedding Bell Blues, Be My Baby and Long Time Gone (released on July 13). They all take place in the Texas Hill Country.