Ava's Man

Starred review from August 6, 2001
Following up his bestselling memoir, All Over But the Shoutin'
, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bragg again creates a soulful, poignant portrait of working-class Southern life by looking deep into his own family history. This new volume recounts the life of his maternal grand father, Charlie Bundrum, who died in 1958, one year before Rick was born. Lacking a grandfather, the New York Times
reporter sets out to build one "from dirt level, using half-forgotten sayings, half-remembered stories and a few yellowed, brittle, black-and-white photographs."His investigations in the Appalachian foothills along the Georgia-Alabama border turn up a beloved, larger-than-life rambler who inspired backwoods legend among contemporaries, undying devotion from his wife, Ava, and unabashed love and awe from his large extended family. Big-hearted but flawed, Bundrum was a man of contradiction. Genuinely devoted to his wife and children, he was a tenuous provider (a roofer by trade, he also cooked—and frequently tasted—his own moonshine) who fiercely defended his clan from trouble and hardship even as he occasionally brought it on them. He lived by a code of country justice that tolerated brawling with lawmen but disdained bullying, distinguished "good, solid biblical cursing" from mere "ugly talk," and forswore spitting in the presence of ladies.Bragg strives for an unvarnished portrait—and succeeds, mostly—balancing tremendous affection for his grandfather with the recognition that Bundrum, the last of his kind and a connection to a culture of backwoods self-sufficiency long dead in the South, deserves—and would demand—an honest rendering. "He is so much more precious smelling of hot cornbread and whiskey than milk and honey," Bragg writes. "The one thing I am dead sure of is that his ghost... would have haunted me forever if I had whitewashed him." A man like that, he concludes, "would, surely, want a legacy with some pepper on it."Bragg delivers, with deep affection, fierce familial pride, and keen, vivid prose that's as sharp and bone-bright as a butcher knife. In this pungent paean to his grandfather, Bragg also chronicles a vanished South that—like the once-wild Coosa River Charlie liked to ply in homemade boats—is becoming too tamed to accommodate those who would carve out a proud if hardscrabble living on its margins. (Sept.)Forecast: Knopf is pulling out all the stops for this; know they've got a winner: 200,000-copy first printing, 19-city author tour, and a nine-copy floor display including audio and large-print editions, and paperback copies of
All Over but the Shoutin'.

Starred review from June 15, 2001
Bragg, national correspondent for the New York Times and author of the best-selling memoir All Over but the Shoutin', here resumes his family history. In the introduction, he repeats the question readers often asked about his mother where did her heart and backbone come from? Responding to readers' concern that he'd given short shrift to his mother's parents, Ava and Charlie Bundrum, the author set out to re-create the life of a grandfather who died before Bragg was born. This could not have been easy; 42 years after his death, Charlie Bundrum's children could not talk about him without weeping. They knew that no one could replace his unconditional love, appetite for life, and ability to chase away fear with storytelling and laughter. His death shredded their hearts. Bragg writes with compassion and honesty about this man, who earned his living as a roofer, a bootlegger, a carpenter, and a fisherman. No one writes about the South like Bragg. He reminds readers that the fabled agrarians weren't the only Southerners, as he refuses to whitewash the bootleggers, violence, and poverty of the Depression-era rural South. Bragg's empathy and humanity shine throughout. Highly recommended for all libraries. Pam Kingsbury, Alabama Humanities Fnd., Florence

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2001
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Bragg paid tribute to his resilient mother in "All Over "but the Shoutin' (1997); now he tells the story of his grandfather, Charlie Bundrum. When Bragg asked his aunts why he had heard so little about his grandfather on his mother's side of the family, the response was tears. "What kind of man was this, I wondered, who is so beloved, so missed, that the mere mention of his death would make them cry forty-two years after he was preached into the sky? A man like that probably deserves a book." And what a book this is. Employing the same spare eloquence that marked his previous memoir, Bragg conjures a tall, bone-thin man who worked as a roofer, liked to run a trotline baited with chicken guts across the Coosa River and caught washtubs full of catfish, who made good whiskey in the pines, liked the taste of his own product, and loved to sing, laugh, talk, and buck-dance. Despite harsh poverty, Charlie displayed an unapologetic, hard-eyed independence and outran many a revenuer. In creating an indelible portrait of his grandfather, Bragg also brings alive a particular time and place, showing us just how much we've lost even as we've made "progress." (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)

November 5, 2001
In less capable hands, this biography could have been mawkish and mundane. Instead, Bragg's telling of his maternal grandfather's life is eloquent and touching, and his spare prose is alive with fresh metaphors and memorable sentences. Bragg never knew Charlie Bundrum, who died prematurely at age 51 in 1958; the story of this proud, flawed, loving and much-loved hero of Depression-era Appalachia is derived from family and community oral history. Interestingly, this book emerged because readers of Bragg's bestselling book about his mother, Ava (All Over but the Shoutin'), wanted to understand the force that drove her to be such a strong figure. Few actors could have read this work as well as the author has. Bragg's Appalachian accent, slightly polished by Northern living, adds authenticity to the fine, funny and painful anecdotes that made up his grandfather's life and to the feelings each story encompasses. His smooth reading enhances the rhythms and sounds of his prose, rendering with genuine sincerity his deep admiration for his people and for the vanishing culture they represent. Simultaneous release with the Knopf hardcover (Forecasts, Aug. 6).