Product details
- ISBN 9780875659619
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 31 Mar 2026
- Publisher: Texas Christian University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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At age three, Rita moved to the ranch with her mother and soon formed a deep bond with her stepfather, ranch owner Albert “Buster” Wharton, who became her closest ally. But when his death sparked a bitter legal battle that ended with Rita and her mother’s eviction, the only home she had ever known slipped away.
From ages three to seventeen, the ranch was her classroom, playground, and stage. Rita learned to ride horses and shoot guns from Buster, to smoke at age five from Miss Mandy, and to contemplate Buddhism from Grace, her Japanese governess.
Cowboys, cooks, and caretakers imparted their own colorful—and sometimes troubling—lessons, while the ranch drew everyone from political figures and movie stars to eccentric nannies and rowdy party guests. She witnessed everything from wild soirées where pearl-handled pistols were the party favors to an attempted kidnapping that left her shaken and scarred.
A vivid chronicle of both carefree joys and darker truths, Fallen Angels captures the extravagance, eccentricity, and high-stakes intrigue of one of Texas’s most iconic ranches. More than a memoir, it is a tribute to the land that shaped her, the people who worked it, and the animals that made it home—a portrait of a vanished era in Texas history.
Rita Lorena Link was born in Texas in 1945 and spent her childhood on the historic Waggoner Ranch, where she lived until the passing of her adoptive father, Albert Buckman Wharton. Though she never returned to the ranch, its landscape and legacy remain the most influential forces in her life and writing. She now resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her daughter.
