{"id":276188,"date":"2026-05-02T17:36:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T17:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/276188\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T17:36:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T17:36:07","slug":"manor-roads-may-day-festival-leads-our-top-austin-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/276188\/","title":{"rendered":"Manor Road’s May Day Festival leads our top Austin news"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Texas animal sanctuary owner has told her story in a debut book and is bringing it to Austin for a signing. Renee King-Sonnen, who runs the Rowdy Girl Sanctuary<\/a> in Waelder, will appear at BookPeople for her first-ever signing on June 26.<\/p>\n

Waelder is located along Interstate 10, about evenly between Austin, Houston, and San Antonio. It was where King-Sonnen and her husband Tommy Sonnen ran a cattle ranch before converting it to a vegan sanctuary for animals. <\/p>\n

King-Sonnen’s life began to change when she started raising a cow she named Rowdy Girl. She has intended to eventually slaughter Rowdy Gal, but becoming closer led her to a change of heart. In 2014, Tommy agreed to sell his herd to Renee if she could pay $30,000 before they’re sent to slaughter. Although it was Renee who initiated the change, now Tommy is a vegan, too.<\/p>\n

King-Sonnen’s new memoir is called Rowdy Girl: Confessions of a Vegan Cattle Rancher. Readers will learn about how animal agriculture works and experience some of the thoughts that led King-Sonnen to challenge her beliefs about animals, food systems, and people’s roles in keeping those systems going. <\/p>\n

“Life works in mysterious ways – and I believe that bitty calf and I found one another for a reason,” wrote King-Sonnen in a Facebook post announcing the BookPeople signing. She adds, “This book is not only about my personal story – it\u2019s about HOW we crack open the meat matrix that dominates our world – most notably in cattle country, Texas in the USA!”<\/p>\n

Free registry for the BookPeople signing is open now via Eventbrite<\/a>. More information about the the event and a link to preorder are available at BookPeople.com<\/a>. BookPeople is located at 603 N. Lamar Blvd., and the signing starts at 7 pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Texas animal sanctuary owner has told her story in a debut book and is bringing it to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[4283,132,134,133,751,427,26225,7959],"class_list":["post-276188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-arts","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-closing","tag-hot-headlines","tag-meow-wolf","tag-most-popular-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}