Rick Bragg, who has written about his family in two popular books, All Over but the Shoutin’ and Ava’s Man, has now dealt with his father. He was a hard man to deal with during Rick’s childhood and young adulthood. Although he loved his wife and family, he was a hard drinker and fighter, admired by the men of his community for the latter, and by the women for his good looks.

“He lost his looks, drank his paychecks, wrecked his old cars, and stiffed the Tennessee Valley Electric until all they would give us was free dark. My mother lived in fear of him, and my older brother, more aware of what was going on than me, lived in pure loathing.”

It was only, as a man in his 40s, that Rick Bragg became a father himself, a stepfather of a young boy whose mother he loved. “But by the time I regained what sense I had, I was driving car pool next to a ten-year-old boy who, for reasons I may never truly understand, believes

hung the moon.”

It seems natural, as he gets to know “the boy,” as he calls him, that Rick takes another look at his own father. He also reminisces about himself: “I don’t know what kind of man I turned out to be, but I was good at being a boy.” He is also superlatively good at being a writer.

He writes of his ancestors and his grandparents, as well as the dirtpoor people he lived among, telling of the rural and small-town poverty and the dangers of the mill that kept many of them from starving, but killed and maimed. “But in this community of violence and suffering were some of the finest people who have ever lived, who scraped a few handfuls of flour into a paper bag, house by house, until a full bag could be delivered to a family whose provider was sick, shot, cut or hurt by the machines.”

In researching his father’s life, he interviewed his mother (who never stopped loving him), his brothers, and cousins and friends who remembered him with understanding. As he relates these stories, he intersperses tales of his growing relationship with his own boy. The account is full of humor and sorrow, and this writer’s attempt to tell about the relationships between fathers and sons is poignant and unforgettable.