My Goose is Cooked: The Continuation of a West Texas Ranch Woman’s Story

Hallie Stillwell — ranch woman, justice of the peace, writer — was known and loved far beyond the Big Bend, where she spent most of her near-hundred years. In her second book she tells how she took up the reins after the untimely death of her husband Roy and held tenaciously, against all odds, to the ranch where they had shared an eventful though rugged life. Truly a legend in her own time, she had a great story, and she tells it with warmth and good humor.

— Elmer Kelton, Western author

When Hallie Crawford Stillwell died on August 18, 1997, she was two months and two days short of her 100th birthday. Hallie had published the first volume of her memoirs, I’ll Gather My Geese, in 1991. In that volume she told the story of her life as a pioneer ranch woman and wife in the Big Bend country from the time of her marriage in 1918 to the death of her husband Roy Stillwell in 1948.

Before Hallie became too infirm to write, she completed ten chapters of the second volume of her memoirs. She herself titled that work My Goose Is Cooked. Betty Heath has assembled stories written by Hallie, collected newspaper articles, and gathered personal remembrances of Hallie to round out the volume.