Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine

A Novel

By: Callie Collins

Narrated by: Eva Kaminsky, Michael Crouch

Against the vibrant,bluesy backdrop of 1970s Austin, Texas, this electrifying debut charts the scorching chaos of perpetual change.

It's 1975 in Austin, and the Rush Creek Saloon, five miles west of town, is a bar without a crowd. But when a strange new house band takes the stage, the hippies roll in and the good ole boys find their way back. Told in a trio of voices—a guitarist chasing what may be his last shot at success; a bar owner trying to see a future in her lifeless marriage; and a young kid from East Texas desperate for kinship, or at least something to take the damn edge off—Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine delivers a riotous love song to an enigmatic city.

In her heartfelt, shimmering rockabilly ode to a place in a permanent state of becoming,Callie Collins captures the roughhousing mood and paradoxical longings of the American psyche. Just inside the doors of the Rush Creek Saloon, the old smacks into the new—and the messy desire for a good time at any cost bucks up against the profound need to belong.

Critic reviews

"Collins debuts with a finely tuned tale of artistic ambition and cultural shifts in the 1970s Texas music scene…Brilliantly conveys the nitty-gritty details of a working musician’s day-to-day. Music lovers will especially dig this.”
--Kirkus Reviews


“The old, weird Austin is not dead! It's alive and kicking on the pages of Callie Collins's beautiful novel, a soulful, funny and note-perfect ode to that renegade city and to the righteous music that made it what it is. Fans of Denis Johnson and Willy Vlautin will DEVOUR.”
– Kevin Barry, author of Night Boat to Tangier and The Heart in Winter


"Callie Collins summons 1970s Austin and the Rush Creek Saloon with such tangibility, such heft, they feel as real to me as if I had lived within them. Her debut is gorgeously written and unflinchingly wise. This book and its characters have my heart."
--Stacey Swann, author of Olympus, Texas


"Walk Softly On This Heart of Mine marks a brilliant debut. Collins is a natural story-teller, inhabiting voices and settings with preternatural grace and intimacy. There's a hard-luck humanity and down-home soulfulness to this evocation of Texas life that puts me in mind of Larry McMurtry."
--Peter Ho Davies, author of The Fortunes

Broke my heart

Michael Crouch narration of Steven at the end brought clarity and tears. The novel itself was filled with interesting characters, and could almost hear the music.