A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. It is the story of Bragg's father, a hard-drinking man with a murderous temper and the habit of running out on the people who needed him most.
But at the center of this soaring memoir is Bragg's mother, who went eighteen years without a new dress so that her sons could have school clothes and picked other people's cotton so that her children wouldn't have to live on welfare alone. Evoking these lives--and the country that shaped and nourished them--with artistry, honesty, and compassion, Rick Bragg brings home the love and suffering that lie at the heart of every family. The result is unforgettable.
- ISBN10 0679774424
- ISBN13 9780679774426
- Publish Date 26 August 1997
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 20 May 2017
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Random House USA Inc
- Imprint Large Print Editions
- Edition Large type / large print edition
- Format Paperback
- Pages 480
- Language English