Mystery Unveiled at the Alamo

Book Selection for the City Wide Reading Program,
1 Book. 1 San Antonio., is Revealed

(SAN ANTONIO) — With the historic Alamo serving as a majestic backdrop, the mystery surrounding which book would be chosen to shape San Antonians reading lists this summer was finally revealed. The 2007 selection for 1 Book. 1 San Antonio. is The Gates of the Alamo by Texas author Stephen Harrigan. A city-wide reading initiative, 1 Book. 1 San Antonio., is aimed at increasing literacy in the San Antonio community by encouraging residents to read one book and share and discuss their experience with others. The program returns for a second year after a very successful introduction in 2006 and is being presented in 2007 by H-E-B, Chase Bank and Texas Public Radio.

Bexar County District Attorney, Susan Reed, returning as the chair of 1 Book. 1 San Antonio. for a second year, was joined by Guillermo Nicolas, Chair of the San Antonio Public Library Foundation and Ramiro Salazar, Director of the San Antonio Public Library system for the announcement at which a giant cover of the book was unveiled and its author was welcomed and introduced to the city.

A much-celebrated book, The Gates of the Alamo, has earned rave reviews and numerous awards including the TCU Texas Book Award, the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum and the Spur Award for the Best Novel of the West. The powerful novel recounts the story of the Alamo in a highly moving drama that interweaves historical details. The book will be available for purchase at the check stands of H-E-B stores across the city for $9.99 or available for checkout at any one of San Antonio's local library branches beginning today.

The book's author, Stephen Harrigan, is the acclaimed author of four novels and has written many movies for television including HBO's award-winning The Last of His Tribe, and King of Texas, a western retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear for TNT. His most recent television production was The Colt, an adaptation of a short story by the Nobel-prize winning author Mikhail Sholokhov, which aired on The Hallmark Channel. For his screenplay of The Colt, Harrigan was nominated for a Writers Guild Award and the Humanitas Prize.

"I'm thrilled to be selected as the 2007 featured author for 1 Book. 1 San Antonio.," said Harrigan. "Ever since I was a little kid, I'd been fascinated by the Alamo, and I knew since the age of 14 that I wanted to write a novel about it. I'm thrilled to share this book with the San Antonio community and hope their experience leads to a desire to delve deeper into the history of their great city."