Texas Secessionists Standoff

Donna Marie Miller, a freelance journalist and writer in Austin, is also the author of The Broken Spoke: Austin’s Legendary Honky-Tonk.

“Those who remember news coverage of the events chronicled in Texas Secessionists Standoff know only a small part of the story. Donna Marie Miller has stepped up to provide the rest of the story with meticulous research, detailed layering, and steady, straightforward writing. A gripping and gritty, full-bore saga with countless twists and turns that span the state of Texas.”—Dan K. Utley, former Texas Historical Commission historian and coauthor of History along the Way: Stories beyond the Texas Roadside Markers and Echoes of Glory: Historic Military Sites across Texas"Donna Miller has done a fine job telling the story of the 1997 Republic of Texas standoff at Fort Davis. Not only did I enjoy reading this book, I learned much about the incident that I didn't know. Which, considering that I was there as the chief spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety when many of the events in this book went down, says a lot about her skills as a researcher and writer."—Mike Cox, member of the Texas institute of letters and author of Time of the Rangers and Gunfights & Sites in Texas Ranger History“Donna Marie Miller delivers thorough reporting, new sources, and telling details about how a financial crisis drove a middle-class Texan to join a nationalist militia and become the center of an armed standoff with the Texas Rangers. Texas Secessionists Standoff reveals how a handful of hucksters with fringe ideas could dupe desperate, well-meaning people into challenging the fundamental principles of our society, ruining lives in the process. The 1997 Republic of Texas War may have ended 25 years ago, but the lessons in Miller’s book are more relevant than ever.”—Chris Tomlinson, columnist for the Houston Chronicle and co-author of Forget the Alamo