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.
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 09/08/1998
ISBN: 9780679774020
Pages: 352
Weight: 0.76lbs
Size: 7.99h x 5.26w x 0.72d
Review Citations: New York Times 09/20/1998 pg. 40
Booklist 09/15/1999 pg. 251
Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 35581 / All Over But the Shoutin'
Reading Level: 6.4 /
Interest Level: Upper Grade /
Point Value: 20