A finalist for the 2026 Spur Award for Best Western Contemporary Novel, Well of Deception (Stoney Creek Publishing 2025), by Cynthia Leal Massey, is a historical fiction novel taking place in south central Texas in the late 1950s. Inspired by true events, this story is about the murder of Maggie Schneider at her turkey farm in broad daylight. Though it is a murder mystery, this book stands apart from classic “whodunnit” stories. As is typical with a small town, everyone thinks they know who killed Maggie. However, no one knows why or how to prove it, and years of family secrets and grudges hold the truth.
Over the years, multi-award-winning author Cynthia Leal Massey has written and published hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles. Her previous books have won several awards, including Death of a Texas Ranger, A True Story of Murder and Vengeance on the Texas Frontier (SACS Award and Will Rogers Silver Medallion Award), and What Lies Beneath, Texas Pioneer Cemeteries and Graveyards (SACS Award). Additionally, her first book, Fire Lillies, and its sequel, The Caballeros of Ruby, were finalists for The Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition Award for Best Historical Fiction and The WILLA Literary Award for Best Original Softcover Fiction, respectively.
Jennifer Lewis: I saw in your author’s note that this novel was inspired by the story of a shotgun on the wall of a bar in Texas. Can you expand on that story and get into what the interviewing and researching process was like?
Cynthia Leal Massey
Cynthia Leal Massey: Sure, I was actually working on a book about Helotes, the town that I live in, and it was like a history of the town, and people were telling me that I needed to go talk to Lester Kreuger who owned the bar in our old town district. They said he’d been around a long time, and he had plenty of stories, and plus, he was from one of the pioneer families of our area. So, our area was established in about the 1850s. His family was German and they had come here in about the 1870s. Anyway, so I went to talk to him because I was doing this research for the book. I went into the bar and—now, this is a Texas country club, it’s called The Country Club, [laughs] and it’s not your vision of a country club. It’s a Texas country club, and you know, there’s a boar head on the window, and a lot of farm implements hanging from the ceiling, and you know, it’s just a rusty old barn with a bunch of old codgers in there drinking beer. Anyway, I walked in, and it’s very smoky—this is a smoking establishment. I walked in, and I asked for Lester. He was behind the bar. He’s the owner, the proprietor, and he also served as the bar tender. And I asked him—I told him I was working on this book about the history of the town and if he had any stories to tell me. He said, “You know what, I actually have a great story.” And then he pointed to a rifle that was hanging on the wall, and it was a very old rifle, and it looked kind of decrepit, but he said, “Oh, see that rifle up there?” I said yes. And he said, “That was involved in a murder, and I got the gun, and actually I was kind of involved in the whole thing,” and I said, “Wow.” He said, “Are you interested in that story?” I said, “Absolutely!” So, he pulls out a yellowed newspaper from the back of the bar, and it was an article dated 1961. It was basically the outcome of finding this person who had been a killer, and that person was [Lester’s] cousin. He was like [Lester’s] mother’s first cousin, so his first cousin once removed, I guess you would say. And so that’s how he was related to him. And [Lester] actually had been on the farm—this murder happened on a farm—and he happened to be on the farm of the murderer when this murder was committed on the farm next door. So, he was involved very much in this story.
That’s what the rifle sparked, and so I started doing research based on that article and went back to the day that this murder actually happened, which was four years earlier. So, there was this four-year lapse between when the murder happened and when the killer was found, and I was wondering why it took so long. And it was just all those questions arising, so I decided to do research. Now, initially, I was going to write it as a nonfiction book. I write both fiction and nonfiction, but as I started, I interviewed a lot of people who were not intimately involved because the woman who was killed and her husband had no children, and the man who killed her and his wife: they had no children, so there were no direct descendants. Everyone I interviewed were peripheral. They were cousins, that kind of thing. Plus, I didn’t get—there were no court documents other than the, I guess you would say, the grand jury indictment for murder, even though the person had not been found. So, there was really no real, solid, tangible evidence that this man actually even killed her, although everyone pretty much new he did. So, I realized as I was interviewing and getting all of these stories, the other thing I found out was when I was doing research on both families, I found out that there was so many suicides, accidental deaths, very strange happenings in these families, and my immediate thought was “Wow, this was like the stuff of fiction,” you know? So, it just sort of spurred me to, since I couldn’t really, in my mind, write a really interesting, fun—well, not fun—but just a fascinating story about this as nonfiction. I thought, “Well, I can do this as fiction,” and that’s basically what I did.
Jennifer Lewis
JL: Wow. So, although this is based on real events, do you feel that parts of you are in this story?
CLM: Oh, yeah. I mean I think all authors when they’re writing—I’ve been around a while, so I do have a lot of experience. Now I’m married, and I’ve been married happily for forty years, and so I know what it’s like to be married. You know what I mean? It’s never perfect. There’s always ups and downs and that kind of thing. Now, obviously, I can’t relate to these two couples and what they were going through so much. I do relate to the feelings—like, for example, that Leta may have had. Now, I am also a mother and a grandmother, and I remember when I was writing Leta’s character, the fact that she never had children, and they were married a long time. I remember thinking “How sad.” Especially after, you know, he went missing. She didn’t have any direct descendants. She didn’t have children; she didn’t have anyone to confide in. She had nieces and nephews, you know, that kind of thing, but it’s very different. And she kind of, you know at the beginning, kind of makes that observation, that she didn’t even have any children or grandchildren to hold on to after all this happened. And that’s very sad, and I think a lot of women today who are choosing not to have children don’t realize when you’re young how when you get older how comforting it can be to have them. Also, it’s not easy though [laughs]. Sometimes children give you a hard time. I’m not saying it’s all fun and roses having children, but it is—blood, I guess you can say, is thicker than water.
I guess the other character who I really related to was the reporter. The reporter who went in and interviewed Leta after her husband had been missing a while. Mabel, as I recall. Mabel Klepper I think was her name. I’d been interviewing people basically my whole life because my background is also in journalism, and I worked for a little bit early on in the newspaper business. And also, when I work on my books I do a lot of research, and so a lot of that requires not just—a lot of stuff is on the computer now, but there’s nothing that beats—I call it field research—and interviewing people. There’s nothing that can really beat that for authenticity, so when I was doing that character, Mabel interviewing her, I really related to that, and trying to be empathetic and that kind of thing to the person that you’re interviewing, and it’s hard because usually when your interviewing someone, especially as a newspaper reporter, sometimes what you’re interviewing them about is tragic, so you have to kind of be very gentle on how you approach that.
JL: Yeah, that’s very interesting. So, going off of all that, what is your typical writing process, and does this book differ at all?
CLM: Yeah, this book actually did differ because, as I said, I started out doing my normal research which is—when I start working on any kind of book, whether its fiction or nonfiction, I start with book research. There’s a lot of stuff; you can get a lot of primary sources online now. And so, I’ll go online to county records, the Texas Archives. There’s a lot of things in the Texas Archives in Austin that are actual documents that you can download now. Sometimes you have to actually go to the place if they are not digitized, and that’s fine too. I don’t mind doing it, but I do that first before I even interview anyone. If this is a story that I have to interview people, which it usually is, I go very prepared. I have a lot of information and questions, and I found, especially on family histories, I find that you can even find a lot of that on Ancestry or Family Search, and I use that quite a bit, so when I go to interview the individual, I sometimes know more than they do about their family. It’s kind of interesting. There was one book that I worked on, The Death of a Texas Ranger, and that family, they didn’t know that their ancestor was a Texas Ranger, and that was interesting, and I actually helped them get a Texas Ranger marker for his gravesite, so that was a really interesting time.
This particular book, like I said, a lot of the direct people who would have known more were dead, and in fact, Lester was probably the only one still alive. There were a few cousins whose uncles and stuff had participated in the searches for this person, and they had heard stories, but they were young. They were like—there was one of them that was like six or seven years old, and there was another one that was fifteen when this occurred. Lester was already well into his seventies when I interviewed him. And he, again, was about twenty-eight or so when this murder occurred. Like I said he was there at the beginning, and he was actually the one who found the remains of this person, which was very coincidental, and which also made him a person of interest for the police, as you can imagine. Sometimes life is—you know they’ll say, “what a coincidence” and sometimes it actually just is a coincidence but it’s kind of odd.
JL: What authors inspire you?
Cynthia Leal Massey
CLM: Gosh. There’s a lot of authors. For nonfiction, my favorite nonfiction writer is Eric Larson. Eric writes—I guess you would call it creative nonfiction. I’m using the term creative nonfiction in that he writes scenes and uses dialogue as if you’re reading a novel, and he’s prolific. He’s a wonderful, wonderful writer. His breakout novel was called Isaac’s Storm about the Galveston storm of 1900, and when I read that, I was just—and it’s nonfiction. It’s published by a big publisher too. He does a lot of research and that kind of thing. And then the next one I read of his was The Devil in The White City about the–and I love historical stuff. I love historical nonfiction. That was about the Chicago world fair and a murderer who actually was killing young women during that world fair. Fabulous book, fabulous book. He inspires me, and so when I write nonfiction, I try to write nonfiction in scenes, you know, that you can document, and you can use dialogue as long as you can find actual dialogue in something they may have written, a deposition, something you can use for dialogue that you can actually put in there for nonfiction. So, anyway, he inspires me quite a bit. I don’t like dry history, you know. Just facts, facts, facts. I want it to be an interesting read.
For fiction, I just came across a new author who is just fantastic, and she actually is published by the publisher that published [Well of Deception]. Her name is Teddy Jones. She writes literary fiction, but she also writes a lot of historical stuff. She actually won a short story Faulkner Award, which gives you an idea of the type of writing style she has. She’s quite good, and I would actually encourage you to interview her if you get the chance to read one of her books. Her most recent ones—they’re very, very good. Anyway, I like to read mysteries as well, so the mystery writers I like are Susan Cummins Miller—and these are like western-type writers, but they also write historical mysteries. I love historical mysteries—and Cindy Sandell, well actually Irene Sandell is her writing name, and Donis Casey. They all are just really good mystery writers, and they write stories set in the west, I guess you could say. Cindy’s books are historical fiction set in Texas, so I do like to read Texas stuff, but I’ll read anything, you know. I mean I read intriguing storylines. It doesn’t matter where they’re from. If it intrigues me, I’ll pick it up and read it.
JL: I now have a list to definitely look into because that all sounds very interesting. So, back to Well of Deception: I was really taken by the role of women in the novel, and how they carried their own strength throughout the story. I also really liked that you didn’t just showcase one type of strength. What was the inspiration for these women?
CLM: Well, they were all very different, as you said, but again, let’s go back to the 1950s when the book is set. Remember women in that time period were very different. It was a time period of getting ready to change in the sixties, which obviously became a big change. But in those days, women, especially farm women, women who lived in Texas in the rural areas, stayed close to home. They took care of their husbands; most of them didn’t work. The difference in this particular farm—these two families—is these women didn’t have children, which is unusual because when you lived on a farm during that time in Texas, you had children to help you on the farm if nothing else. So, the fact that they didn’t have children was an intriguing thing for me.
Maggie, of course, the main person, is very important throughout the whole book, except that she dies at the very beginning. But of course, there’s a lot of flashbacks, so you can see the kind of woman that Maggie was. She was, I guess you would call, feisty. She did not let anything get her down. She was an entrepreneur during a time when women did not venture out for that kind of thing. She was really good—she’s actually based on a real woman who was a turkey breeder, and she was prolific and very proficient in all kinds of poultry, but turkeys were her specialty, and she was a breeder, and she was one of the very few in Texas at that time who was a blood breeder who did this. And so, she also carried a gun. She wasn’t a fool at all. She wanted to make her mark, and she couldn’t have children, or she wouldn’t have children, but she said, “That’s ok. I’m going to do this other thing.” She even bread dogs for a while. She was definitely a woman after her own. In my book, she’s very attractive. Men were very attracted to her, but at the same time they didn’t like the fact that she was out there. Women felt the same way. You know they were at once attracted to her and not because she made them feel uncomfortable because she was actually a woman before her own time.
JL: Yeah, for sure. I really liked how you wrote Maggie and how she is sort of that progressive, feisty woman. Do you want to speak at all on how you wrote Leta, and how there’s strength on that side of it?
CLM: She loved Amos. She loved her husband despite—and this is true. Remember that this is based or inspired by actual events, an actual story. And the timeline of the murder and some of the background is all true based on something that really happened. She actually did date him a long time before they got married, and I remember thinking I can’t even imagine being engaged that long. That also raised all these questions. She was a very good daughter, and in those days too, the youngest child, especially if you were a female, someone had to take care of the parents. The system we have today of putting people in nursing homes—it didn’t exist. The children especially were the sole people—and of course usually it’s the female—to take care of the people if they needed help. So, Leta just knew that that was her responsibility, and I actually applaud her for that because she kind of gave up some stuff because of that. Towards the end when her parents finally died, and she was so depressed or feeling bereft over it, she realized that actually helping take care of them wasn’t the burden that she thought it was. And that’s a good message, I think, for people who are caregivers today because once its over—it seems like when it’s happening it’s so difficult, and “when is this ever going to end,” and the only way it usually ends is in someone’s death, and you don’t want to wish that on anyone, but when it happens you feel very, very sad, and then you realize “now what am I going to do? Now I have to make my own life.” And as far as relating to that, I wasn’t the caregiver of my mother or my dad. We had caregivers who came to our home, but I did a lot for them. My dad died of Alzheimer’s after seven years, and then my mom died about five years later, and she had severe heart problems, so I had to do a lot, and I was the eldest. I had to do a lot to help them. And I remember thinking at the time I was actually writing, that was when a lot of this was happening, so I really did feel for Leta in taking care of her parents and why she did it and how she felt afterward. I kind of did get that. I definitely related to that.
JL: Its always interesting how life kind of works like that.
CLM: Yes, especially when you’re a writer. You use everything that’s in your arsenal, your experience with everybody, to be a writer.
JL: You did a great job with the setting of this story. I don’t think this story could be transferred to any other location than southern Texas in the 1950s and 60s and still work. Can you talk about the role of place in this novel? Did you go into this story with the role of place in mind?
CLM: Well, one of the reasons my history is all set in Texas because I feel like that’s what I’ve been researching and writing about for the last almost thirty years, and I love Texas. You said you’ve not been to Texas, have you?
JL: No, not yet.
CLM: Texas has got this mystique. Our history is just so unusual. The fact that we were a republic, you know, for a while. We were our own country for—I guess it was ten years. And so, there’s this attitude in Texas, you know that “Don’t mess with Texas” kind of an attitude, and we definitely have it, but we have such a unique history between the Spaniards coming, the Indians already being here. The Native Americans and the French. There’s just this conglomeration of different ethnicities that have been here from the very, very beginning, and so we just have a very unique history here. So, setting is very important to me, and because of the unique setting we have, as a historical writer, I definitely use that, and that’s why. Now, this story [takes place] also during the drought. The 1950s were a time of great distress and devastation for this area, and a lot of farms were abandoned because they had no water. Water is extremely important. To this day, Texans are always fighting over water rights and over keeping our water clean, and water’s just a big important thing because we have these periodic droughts. Now, the drought of the fifties was a very big one. They call it the Drought of Record because we have not had one since then as devastating as that one. That one lasted for seven years. It was a tough one. So, yeah, setting did play an important part.
In fact, the reason the book is called Well of Deception is because the well symbolized that important part of Texas, which is our water. So, that’s why one of the theories of this murder was because of the water well because Maggie was using so much water for her turkeys. Who would have ever guessed that? I didn’t know a lot about turkeys when I started my research. And I actually went to interview a woman who raised turkeys, and it turned out that her father bought the woman who was killed—the woman [Maggie is based on]—he bought her equipment after she died, and this was his daughter that I was talking to, and she showed me the equipment. I didn’t realize that when I called her for the interview. I just thought that was really cool. She’s the one that explained to me how you go about plucking and doing everything, raising the turkeys and how you clean them, how much water is used, and it’s an extraordinary amount of water used. So, during a drought to use this kind of water, if you’re using a shared well, which this family did, yeah, there would be some problems there. But as you know happened in the book, there were other things going on. There always is.
JL: What was the publishing process like for this book?
CLM: With this particular publisher, the one who finally published it, it was fantastic. Stoney Creek Publishing is, I guess you would call it a regional press here. It’s in Wimberley, Texas, which is not too far from where I live. Maybe an hour’s drive or something. Loren, who is the publisher, worked for Texas Monthly, which is a big deal here in Texas. Fantastic writer himself, and he’s also written books, and he’s a nonfiction and a fiction writer. Anyway, I wanted to work with him because I like the way he wrote, his sensibilities, but he also has a staff, he has an editorial staff, and he has a publicity staff, promotion staff, which is extremely important when you’re trying to get a book out there. That was the other reason, so finally being accepted for publication—it was just like a dream come true. I worked with an editor and [Loren] who really love the book, and they really helped me actually with my ending. I had a really hard time with my ending. I also had a really hard time with the title. It did not start out being called Well of Deception. I always have a working title, and I’m not good at titles, and I had to have something, and the one I had was so ridiculous. He pretty much told me we can’t go with that title [laughs]. It’s the kind of title that you have to explain to people, and when you have to explain it, that’s not good [laughs]. The way they came up with it, his editor said, “you know this book is about this well, but it’s also about a lot of things. Everyone in this book is deceiving each other,” and it’s true. They are either deceiving themselves or each other, and she said, “I think we should call it Well of-“ she actually said Well of Betrayal, but then I said, “What if we call it Well of Deception?” because that was the other one she said. Either Well of Betrayal or Well of Deception. And I thought Well of Deception was better than Betrayal. There’s definitely betrayal, for sure, but I think deception was more of an element in the story.
JL: Yeah, I think deception has a bit of mystery to it. Like you want to know what they are deceiving about.
CLM: Exactly.
JL: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
CLM: Sure. You need to write. You need to write every day, and don’t worry about it being perfect. Remember what you’re writing is a draft, and you can change it. Don’t be in a hurry to write something and finish it. You usually don’t like your own stuff anyways, so then I tell you to get a critique group if you can find someone. You can actually get critique groups online now, but it’s nice if you have a local area where you can meet local writers. You read their stuff, and they read your stuff. I learn as much from other people’s writing as I do when someone tells me what I need to change in mine. So, a critique group is good. And go to writers’ conferences. I’ve been going to writers’ conferences for almost—well, I joined Women Writing the West, which is my very first one, in 1997, so how long ago was that? Thirty years?
JL: Yeah, just about.
CLM: Next year will be thirty years. I joined in 1997. And that was when I wrote my first novel. I was trying to find a publisher for it, and they happened to be meeting in San Antonio at that time. It was one of their very first conferences. They usually met in Denver. Someone told me about it because they knew I had written a book. I was teaching at the local junior college, and they started publicizing this conference, so I went to it. It was because of that conference that I met some agents and editors, and I basically started my career because of all the networking. I met my next agent and publisher through Women Writing the West. Because most of these conferences bring in agents and editors, and they have panels, so you listen, and they tell you what they’re looking for, and then you set up a meeting with them, and you pitch your work to them. It’s kind of—you get a little anxious sometimes. I remember when I met my agent, I actually thought I was fine until I sat down across from her—you only have, I think, ten minutes to talk, and I hyperventilated, and I couldn’t—[laughs] I spent the first three minutes, and she told me, “It’s okay. Calm down! Calm down!” She had a pitcher of water and a couple of glasses, and she handed me a glass of water. I couldn’t believe it. I said, “I can’t believe I’m hyperventilating. This is insane.” She said, “Well, I’ve seen worse.” It’s kind of funny. Anyway, she ended up taking my work on, so that was nice [laughs]. I think she felt sorry for me. I don’t know.
JL: I have not been in that situation yet, but I probably wouldn’t be too far off.
[Laughter]
JL: What are you working on right now? Do you have any upcoming projects or readings?
CLM: Okay, so I have like a private book signing/presentation for the CPA Auxiliary. The wives of CPAs. They’re always really receptive. I’ve spoken to their group; every time a book comes out they always want me to come and speak about my new book, and it’s a really nice venue. They have a banquet luncheon, and they invite me to speak, and then I can sell my books. I usually sell quite a few books at that kind of event. I’m also going to be at the Medina County, which is a county close by the county that I live in, they’re having a big author event at the beginning of June, and I’ll be there to say a few words about my book and sell my books there.
But as far as what I’m working on now, I am working on a nonfiction book, and this book is about a Dutch German family, so it’s almost like a family saga of nine children who turned into Texas Rangers, marshals, deputies. There were five brothers, and they were all Texas Rangers, and they were all very significant in the history of Texas from the 1860s to the 1920s, and in fact, one of the brothers, the eldest one, he was a Texas Ranger, he was US Marshall, he was a sheriff’s deputy, he was one of the police chiefs of San Antonio, and his two sons became police chiefs of San Antonio. Their story is a fascinating story, and they were involved in some of the biggest captures of gangs in Texas during the 1880s and 1890s. And then they had three sisters, and their sisters had equally interesting stories. One of the sisters, the eldest, got married and had seven children and ran off in a religious cult and left them. Another one married a former cotton plantation owner, and she lived on his plantation here in south Texas with former slaves. The youngest sister was involved in the spiritualist movement, and she was very fascinating. She was actually in the Texas spiritualist—I don’t know if you know much about the spiritualist movement. It was all over the United States, and it had to do with what happened during the Civil War. So many people died. Young men and families. And it was devastating, that war was devastating. So many young boys had died, and parents were bereaved, so their answer was—they went to God, but they wanted to contact these people who had died. And that’s basically where the spiritual part of it—you know, I’m not going to say the Ouija boards were involved, but this is where they would have these meetings where they would come together and try to raise the person from the death to talk to them. They would have mediums come in. It’s not like you would see in the movies; it’s a little different than that. But anyway, she was involved in that. Actually, one of their nephews died age five, and they were raising him, and so they were very, very bereaved over that. I think that was one of the reasons that she got involved in the spiritualist movement. So, this story is going to go—I mean it’s big—I’m going to be working on it for a while. I finally started after doing almost three years’ worth of research. So, the title of it is Saints and Sinners: The Van Ripers, Keepers of and Renegades from the Law. That’s my working title. We’ll see what happens. As I told you, sometimes publishers come back with something different.
JL: I’ll have to keep an eye out for that one. Before we wrap up, is there anything else you would like to share?
CLM: Well, you might want to share with the readers that this book, Well of Deception, is a finalist for the Spur Award for Best Western Contemporary Novel. I would appreciate that because the Spur Awards have been around since 1953, and they are a very prestigious award whether you’re a winner or—obviously you want to be a winner, but they have a winner and two finalists, sometimes just one finalist depending, but there’s a lot of good writers out there, and I honestly was not expecting to even be a finalist, so when I was called, and they said that I was, that my book had become a finalist, I was thrilled. I am thrilled because to be in a group of so many important people—I mean like Larry McMurtry who wrote Lonesome Dove obviously is a Spur winner. There are so many people you would probably recognize who are Spur winners, so I’m in good company, and it’s just an honor.
JL: Well, congratulations, and thank you again for doing this interview!
CLM: No, thank you! Thank you for your interest and thank you for being a reader and a writer yourself, and I wish you the very best in your career.
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