Well of Deception
In March 1958, Amos Becker tells his wife, Leta, he’ll be taking a walk to town. He doesn’t stop to say hello to the man repairing his truck but makes his way down the driveway and onto the country road. At the next farm, Leta’s sister-in-law, Maggie Schneider, is feeding her turkeys. She looks but doesn’t see what her dogs nervously complain about in the thickets edging the farmland. Her husband Sam hears a loud bang and hurries to the turkey pen. He finds Maggie, her blouse covered in blood where she’s been shot.
Author Massey was prompted to write Well of Deception, the fictional recreation of actual events about a murder and a man gone missing for four years, when she learned the rifle hanging on the back wall of a local bar was the murder weapon. At first tempted to add to her oeuvre of nonfiction books, she decided to fictionalize the Becker/Schneider story to focus less on what happened and delve into the why. Massey is an award-winning writer of regional works of history. One of her books, Death of a Texas Ranger: A True Story of Murder and Vengeance on the Texas Frontier, won the 2015 Will Rogers Silver Medallion Award for Best Western Nonfiction and a San Antonio Conservation Society Publication Award. Her skill is apparent. She weaves a crisp tale in a western style of writing—sparse wording, dialogue that leaves meanings unsaid, descriptions of rugged rural life—and tells a universal tale of the secrets that tear families apart.
