Book excerpt: Against the flamboyant background of the "Golden Spread," the oil-rich Panhandle of the late 1950s, Al Dewlen has poised a full-scale and truly original novel of one Texas family--the Mungers of Amarillo. The six Munger siblings are the heirs of hard-drinking, hardscrabble farmer Cecil Munger, who in one generation brought his family from Dust Bowl poverty to unfathomable wealth. Wayward humor, warmth and passion, vigorous and imaginative revelation silhouette their individual rebelliousness against the debilitating restrictions of the family empire.