In 1929, Dobie published his first book, "A Vaquero of the Brush Country", which helped establish him as an authentic voice of Texas and southwestern culture. While the title page said the book was "Partly from the Reminiscences of John Young", the author was given as J. Frank Dobie. The book was the result of a collaboration between Dobie and Young, a former open-range "vaquero" who had fought against the encroachment of barbed wire on southwest Texas's rangelands. Young had written Dobie for help in writing his autobiography, saying that he intended to use the profits from the book to build a hotel for cattlemen in San Antonio. Dobie agreed to help Young; he rearranged the raw material of Young's reminiscences and rewrote it in the prose of historical writing.