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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Bragg is one of my favorite writers. He creates images of the south that remind me so much of my precious Memaw and stories from the older generations. And good ol‘ southern metaphors are always comforting. Here, Bragg pieces together stories about the maternal grandfather he never knew. Audio is a must! These anecdotes are meant for his drawl and cadence.

Day 4: Ava's Man by Rick Bragg; memoir of Bragg's grandfather that speaks loudly about the complexity of being a man in the South in the early / mid 1900's; read the comments (Blythe is my mom

Rick Bragg is the voice of the Southern soul. His sentences put flesh on a myth and remind us of the magic of words. Brilliant, haunting, and unforgettable.

I guess it's really more towards the "pick" end of the pick to so-so spectrum, but reading it so close after All Over but the Shoutin' made it feel a little more disappointing. It didn't feel as fleshed out. It felt more thrown together. Then again, the author had so little to go on in writing it.

It is true that almost everyone in the foothills farmed and hunted, so there were no breadlines, no men holding signs that begged for work and food, no children going door to door, as they did in Atlanta, asking for table scraps. Here, deep in the woods, was a different agony.Babies, the most tenuous, died from poor diet and simple things, like fevers...In Georgia, one in seven babies died before their first birthday, and in Alabama it was worse.