Mary's Literary Lunch: Rick Bragg

Do you know anything about Rick Bragg? I first met him through his book about his grandfather, whom he never knew, except through stories told by family and friends. That was Ava's Man. It was not his first book, and I was grateful for that because I didn’t have to wait to read more. I immediately went on to the fascinating story about his mother, All Over but the Shoutin'. Most recently, he wrote about his father, The Prince of Frogtown. He has a new book coming out in October about the Alabama cotton mills and the people who lived and died in them. I used to do occupational health surveys in some of these mills so I understand the conditions the people worked in and will be really interested to see how he writes about it. The book is called The Most They Ever Had.

Rick Bragg won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 and he was a reporter for the New York Times so he certainly couldn’t be a true southerner, could he? I say, most emphatically, YES! If you ever have a chance to talk with him or hear him speak you will be assured of his roots. He knows all about sweet tea and slow talking. He never seems to be in a rush. He couldn’t write these books if he rushed: nobody would talk to him!

Rick Bragg writes about the Deep South as it was during his childhood. He writes about the good and the bad, but most of all he writes with passion and clarity; humor and wit. What he writes will help you understand why things are the way they are today and what people did just to survive ‘in the old days.’ The stories about his family are stories about rural southern people, not city folks. They cared about each other and took care of each other. Are we once again at that crossroads?

In addition to these regional gems are a collection of stories, Somebody Told Me, and I Am a Soldier, Too, Jessica Lynch’s personal account of her capture and rescue in Iraq.


Mary