A Dark Fairy Tale of Old Houston

Involving con artists, a boldly gay and adventurous 19th Century Scottish laird, and an infamous black diamond of dubious provenance.

(This is part one of several.)

In addition to the noir jazz hepcat daddy-o jive that is Sig Byrd’s Houston, there is an even more neglected and long-since-out-of-print first person account of the area. This would be Jesse Ziegler’s Wave of the Gulf, a sprawling and glorious mess of a book combining memoir, local folklore, and only a bare sprinkling of th…