Balaam Gimble's Gumption

Winner - Texas Institute of Letters Humor Award for the Funniest Texas Book published in 2004. Balaam Gimble is a contemporary rural-Texas Don Quixote tilting the windmills of change and the threats to the way of life in his fictional hometown of Willoughby, Texas. Tranquil life in Willoughby is upset when Balaam discovers a spring of health-giving mineral water on his two hundred acres of "woods and weeds." The promise of economic revival and riches turns the town on itself as Balaam innocently allows the locals and anyone else interested "to take the waters" in his little subterranean cave. A wheeler-dealer and operator of health resorts from the big city tries to take over Balaam's spring, by hook or crook. This is a humorous story of Balaam' s successful resistance to these forces. It is also a story that gives us pause to contemplate the true cost of economic growth and its impact on us as individuals and on our communities. Witty and entertaining, it is Nichols' first novel.