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Leo Tolstoy’s famous line about all happy families being alike has a fatal flaw: there are no happy families. Happy moments, happy days, maybe even happy years—sure. But look closely enough, and you’ll find the trauma.One way that ambitious authors explore these ordeals is by writing multigenerational epics that draw on historical events to illuminate the past and the present. Given how much Texans love a big story, it’s a little surprising that so few novelists have written books that stretch across the centuries to take advantage of our violent and event-filled history. Philipp Meyer’s The Son is a rare exception, though James Carlos Blake, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, and Larry McMurtry have all told era-spanning stories over the course of series of novels. (Oddly, two of…

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