In Callie Collins’ debut novel, “Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine,” the air is thick with cigarette smoke, spilled beer, and the hypnotic pull of blues guitar. Set against the backdrop of Austin’s evolving music scene in the 1970s, Collins captures a time when the city was still finding its rhythm—a moment when honky-tonks and hippies collided in a combustible mix that could either create something transcendent or end in tragedy. For the patrons and proprietors of Rush Creek Saloon, it does both.
Like the best blues songs, this novel doesn’t shy away from life’s raw edges. Instead, it leans into them, exploring the spaces where hope and desperation share the same barstool, where belonging comes at a price, and where music becomes both salvation and siren song.
Three-Part Harmony: The Characters Who Drive the Narrative
Collins structures her novel around three distinct voices, each one carrying their own strain of longing:
- Doug Moser – A talented guitarist who sees Rush Creek as his ticket to something bigger—maybe fame, maybe just escape from the disappointment he’s become to himself and his family. Doug plays like a man possessed but lives like one haunted, always chasing the next high, the next gig, the next chance to feel something real. His sections hum with restless energy, capturing the internal contradiction of a man who can only truly express himself through his music while remaining emotionally inarticulate in his life.
- Deanna Teague – The saloon’s owner who watches her marriage to Wendell crumble like the limestone beneath the bar’s foundation. Deanna’s narrative carries the weight of a woman who left once but came back home, who understands both sides of Rush Creek’s evolving clientele. Collins writes Deanna with a weathered grace—a woman whose desires are reawakening just as her life is calcifying around her.
- Steven Francis – Young, gay, and desperately seeking connection in a place that isn’t built for boys like him. Steven’s sections are perhaps the most heartbreaking, tinged with religious imagery and his personal “Hick God” who both chastises and comforts him. His obsession with Doug forms the novel’s most volatile emotional current, flowing toward an inevitable, tragic end.
What makes these characters compelling isn’t just their individual struggles but how they orbit each other—sometimes connecting, sometimes missing by inches. Collins excels at showing how people can physically occupy the same space while living in entirely different worlds.
Setting the Stage: Austin’s Changing Landscape
“Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine” isn’t just set in 1970s Austin—it embodies it. Collins recreates a city in transformation, where the old Texas and the new counterculture were still figuring out how to coexist. Rush Creek Saloon, situated on the outskirts, becomes a perfect microcosm for this tension:
“The difference was small sometimes and big other times, but everyone knew it, could see it, that gap between the hicks and the hippies. Between the people who knew the groove and the people who didn’t know the groove, felt weird or iffy toward the groove maybe when they heard it, or were looking for something simpler than the groove.”
The physical spaces—the bar with its low ceiling and sticky floors, the house across the lot where Doug lives with his wife Gwen and son Julian, the dry creek bed where tragedy eventually unfolds—all feel lived-in and authentic. Collins understands that setting isn’t just backdrop but character, influencing and reflecting the human drama playing out within it.
The Sound and the Fury: Writing Style and Structure
Collins’ prose has the cadence of good Texas storytelling—unhurried but purposeful, colloquial without being clichéd. She shifts between her three narrators with a deft touch, giving each a distinct voice while maintaining the novel’s cohesive tone. Doug’s sections buzz with the frenetic energy of someone constantly in motion; Deanna’s carry a melancholic weight; Steven’s spiral between ecstasy and despair, often in the same paragraph.
The novel’s structure builds like a blues progression—establishing familiar patterns before introducing variations that deepen and complicate the emotional landscape. The pacing occasionally lags, particularly in some of the more introspective sections, but Collins knows when to introduce a narrative chord change to pull readers back in.
Where Collins truly shines is in her descriptions of music and its effect on both performers and listeners:
“The notes felt right coming off the walls and down from the ceiling, they were real sugar, even though it was just a box and should’ve felt like a sealed-up echo chamber. Even though I was playing the world’s shittiest electric and could almost feel the wiring inside of it spark against my leg.”
These moments elevate the novel, making readers feel the transformative power of music that drives these characters to seek and destroy in equal measure.
Thematic Resonance: What the Novel Says About Belonging
At its core, “Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine” explores the universal desire to belong and the prices we pay for connection. Each character is searching for their place—Doug in the music world, Deanna in a town that’s changing beneath her feet, Steven in a community that alternately tolerates and rejects him.
Collins examines how places like Rush Creek become sanctuaries for some and battlegrounds for others. The novel asks uncomfortable questions about ownership: Who gets to claim a space as theirs? What happens when different definitions of belonging collide?
The religious undertones, particularly in Steven’s sections with his internal dialogues with “Hick God,” add another dimension to these questions of belonging. Faith becomes yet another contested territory, another way people define themselves against others.
Where the Novel Stumbles: Moments of Dissonance
While Collins’ debut “Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine” impresses in many ways, it occasionally hits some flat notes. The pacing in the middle section drags, with too much time spent circling the same emotional terrain before moving forward. Some scenes, particularly in the lead-up to the climactic power outage at the bar, feel repetitive—establishing tensions that have already been well-established.
Additionally, while the three-perspective structure generally works well, the transitions aren’t always seamless. Occasionally, time jumps forward or backward between sections in ways that momentarily disorient rather than illuminate.
The character of Gwen, Doug’s wife, remains somewhat underdeveloped despite her importance to the plot. She serves primarily as a foil for Deanna and a source of guilt for Doug rather than a fully realized character in her own right.
Final Chorus: A Powerful, Promising Debut
Despite these minor shortcomings, “Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine” announces Callie Collins as a writer with a distinct voice and a keen eye for the complexities of human connection. She captures a specific moment in Austin’s history while telling a story that resonates beyond its time and place.
The novel succeeds most in its unflinching look at how we find and lose ourselves in music, in each other, and in the stories we tell about who we are. It’s about the gaps between who we want to be and who we’ve become, between the music we make and the lives we lead.
For readers who appreciate character-driven literary fiction with a strong sense of place—particularly those drawn to works by Elizabeth Strout, Ann Patchett, or fellow Texas chronicler Larry McMurtry—Collins’ debut will strike a powerful chord.
Strengths:
- Evocative setting that captures 1970s Austin with authenticity
- Complex, flawed characters whose motivations feel real and compelling
- Beautiful writing about music and its emotional impact
- Thoughtful exploration of belonging, identity, and the clash of cultures
Areas for Improvement:
- Occasional pacing issues, particularly in the middle sections
- Some underdeveloped secondary characters
- A few transition points between perspectives that create momentary confusion
Personal Note: Like the unexpected thrill of discovering a raw, incredible band in some out-of-the-way joint, receiving this ARC of Callie Collins’ debut, Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine, felt like stumbling onto something special before the rest of the world catches on. I found myself reading late into the night, almost hearing the twang and thump of the music she describes so vividly. This honest review flows from those midnight reading sessions—nothing manufactured, just the genuine response of someone who’s spent time in places not unlike Rush Creek, where music can feel like salvation and damnation in the same breath. My thanks to the publisher for this advance copy; Collins is a writer whose next work I’ll be eagerly awaiting.
