Jane Roberts Wood: Celebrated Texan Novelist and Educator (1928–2022)

Jane Parsons Roberts Wood, novelist, was born to Allien E. (Richards) Parsons and Joshua Morris Parsons on July 7, 1928, in Memphis, Texas. A third generation Texan, Jane moved with her mother, twin sister Betty, and brother David George to Texarkana after the unexpected death of her father in 1937. She received her bachelor’s degree at Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University) in 1949 and married Winston Harvey Roberts in Texarkana on September 9, 1950. They lived in Fort Worth, where their first child, Melinda Allien Roberts, was born, then moved to Arlington, where their second child, Susan Jane Roberts, was born. Jane Roberts continued her love of the study of British literature—she began studies at the University of Texas at Arlington and finished her master’s degree in English at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. She also studied at Yale University and the University of London. She was a popular teacher of literature at Mountain View College and Brookhaven Junior College in the Dallas County Community College District.

Following the death of her first husband Winston in 1974, she began writing short fiction and poetry. She married Judson W. (Dub) Wood of Dallas on July 31, 1976, and, while continuing to teach and write, made a new home in Dallas with Dub and his two children, David Judson Wood and Barbara Wood. Jane Wood and her husband later retired to Argyle. She was called a “Texas icon” by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram after her first novel, The Train to Estelline, was published by Ellen C. Temple in 1987. The epistolary novel, set in the Texas Panhandle in 1911, became a bestseller and was touted by Liz Carpenter, author and former press secretary for Lady Bird Johnson; Larry L. King, author of the Broadway musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas; and Jean Stapleton, stage and screen actress best-known for her role as Edith Bunker in All in the Family (1971–79). Jane was a contributor and co-editor of the short story collection Out of Dallas (1989), published by the University of North Texas Press (UNT Press), and wrote two sequels to her debut novel, A Place Called Sweet Shrub (1990) and Dance a Little Longer (1993). In 2000 the trilogy was published in paperback form by UNT Press.

Jane Wood’s fourth novel, Grace (2001), is set during World War II and details the lives of four families in Cold Springs, Texas. In Roseborough (2003) she wrote of a widow’s grief, the shifting bonds between parents and children, and transformative friendships. In reviews of these two books, the Dallas Morning News wrote that Wood was “a genuine Texas treasure” who was “more than a storyteller… [she was] a social historian who tells a quality story in a way it ought to be told.” She also wrote a children’s book titled Mocha: The Real Doctor (2003) and published by Blue Sky Press of Albany, Texas. The book was inspired by her daughter Susan’s veterinarian practice. The story concerns Mocha, a cat who sleeps all day but, when the staff goes home, begins his rounds treating the hurting animals. In 2009 the paperback versions of Grace and Roseborough were published by UNT Press as the third and fourth volumes in its Evelyn Oppenheimer Series. For the fifth volume in the series, UNT Press published Wood’s novel Out the Summerhill Road (2010), a murder mystery inspired by a murder that occurred in Texarkana when she was growing up there. The book is set in a small East Texas town thirty-four years after an unsolved murder.

In 2011 Wood donated her archive to the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University. That year the library honored her with a forum about her works and published Seven Stories, a collection of her short fiction, with a foreword by Phyllis Bridges, Cornaro professor of English at Texas Woman’s University and a dear friend of Jane Wood. Bridges wrote, “In all the stories of the collection, there is a striving for understanding, a quest for beauty, a desire for belonging, a search for love… .These qualities invite the reader to participate in the story, to engage in an active way with the narrative.”

Wood became a fellow of both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1998 her short story “My Mother Had a Maid” was the recipient of the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Best Short Story. In 2006 she was honored with the A.C. Greene Award, a lifetime achievement award presented annually by the West Texas Book Festival. Wood was also a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, PEN America, and the Philosophical Society of Texas. She participated in the Philosophical Society’s 2012 meeting; the topic was “Texas Writers Talk.”

Jane Roberts Wood died at the age of ninety-three on January 19, 2022. Her memorial service was held at St. Nicholas Episcopal Church in Flower Mound, and she was buried at Moore Memorial Gardens in Arlington.