Date Published: September 30, 2025
Publisher: She Writes Press/Tantor
Narrator: Ann Marie Gideon
Run Time: 8 hours and 4 minutes
Growing up in West Texas, Jane Little Botkin didn't have designs on becoming a beauty queen. But not long after joining a pageant on a whim in college, she became the first protégé of El Paso's Richard Guy and Rex Holt, known as the "Kings of Beauty"—just as the 1970's counterculture movement began to take off.
A pink, rose-covered gown—a Guyrex creation—symbolizes the fairy tale life that young women in Jane's time imagined beauty queens had. Its near destruction exposes reality: the author's failed relationship with her mother, and her parents' failed relationship with one another. Weaving these narrative threads together is the Wild West notion that anything is possible, especially do-overs.
The Pink Dress awakens nostalgia for the 1960s and 1970s, the era's conflicts and growth pains. A common expectation that women went to college to get "MRS" degrees—to find a husband and become a stay-at-home wife and mother—often prevailed. How does one swim upstream against this notion among feminist voices that protest "If You Want Meat, Go to a Butcher!" at beauty pageants, two flamboyant showmen, and a developing awareness of self? Torn between women's traditional roles and what women could be, Guyrex Girls evolved, as did the author.
About the Author
A NATIONAL AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR, JANE...
melds personal narratives of American families often with compelling stories of western women. Jane is a late bloomer as an author. After teaching for thirty years, she was honored by the Texas State Legislature by formal resolution for her work with local history and education in 2008. She edited and directed publishing fifteen volumes of Texas local history with her former students before she decided to write on her own. Jane's first book propelled her membership on the Western Writers of America board and later as its vice president. Jane continues to judge entries for the WWA's prestigious Spur Award; reviews new book releases; authors articles for various magazines; and speaks to groups in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas.
JANE'S FIRST TWO WORKS HAVE WON NUMEROUS AWARDS IN HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY AND WOMEN'S STUDIES...
including two Spur Awards, two Caroline Bancroft History Prizes, the Texas Book Award, and the Barbara Sudler Award for the best book written on the West by a woman. Jane was also a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award, High Plains Book Award, two Women Writing the West’s Willa Literary Awards, Independent Book Award, Foreword Indies Book Awards, and Sarton Book Award.
Released in fall 2024, Jane’s third book—what she calls her Covid book—is The Pink Dress, A Memoir of a Reluctant Beauty Queen, a Foreword Indies Book Award winner in pop culture and Women Writing the West's Willa Literary Award finalist in creative nonfiction. The narrative brings far West Texas to life during the 1970s’ American Counterculture era.
Jane's newest book, The Breath of a Buffalo, A Biography of Mary Ann Goodnight, will be released from the University of Oklahoma Press tentatively in fall 2026.
Today Jane blissfully escapes into her literary world in the remote White Mountain Wilderness near Nogal, New Mexico, when she is not speaking at various events or preparing for her next nonfiction book.
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