The ditch cleaved frogtown into two realms, and two powerful spirits heldsway,one on each side. One was old, old as the Cross, and the other had aged only a few days in a gallon can. Both had the power to change men's lives. On one side of the ditch, a packed-in, pleading faithful fell hard to their knees and called the Holy Ghost into their jerking bodies in unknown tongues. On the other side, two boys, too much alike to be anything but brothers, flung open the doors of a black Chevrolet and lurched into the yard of 117 D Street, hallelujahs falling dead around them in the weeds. In the house, a sad-eyed little woman looked out, afraid it might be the law. When your boys are gone you're always afraid it might be the law. But it was just her two oldest sons, Roy and Troy, floating home inside the bubble of her prayer, still in crumpled, cattin'-around clothes from Saturday night, still a little drunk on Sunday morning. They were fine boys, though, beautiful boys. They were just steps away now, a few steps. She would fry eggs by the platterful and pour black coffee, and be glad they were not in a smoking hulk wrapped around a tree, or at the mercy of the police. She thought sometimes of walking over to the church to see it all, to hear the lovely music, but that would leave her boys and man unsupervised for too long. Her third son was eleven or so then. He could hear the piano ring across the ditch, even hear people shout, but he could smell the liquor that was always in the house on a Sunday and even steal a taste of it when no one was looking, so it was more real.


The holy ghost moved invisible, but they could feel it in the rafters, sense it racing inside the walls. It was as real as a jag of lightning, or an electrical fire.

The preacher stood on a humble, foot-high dais, to show that he did not believe he was better than them. "Do you believe in the Holy
Ghost?" he asked, and they said they did. He preached then of the end of the world, and it was beautiful.

They were still a new denomination then, but had spread rapidly in the last fifty years around a nation of exploited factory workers, coal
miners, and rural and inner-city poor. Here, it was a church of lintheads, pulpwooders and sharecroppers, shoutin' people, who said
amen like they were throwing a mule shoe. Biblical scholars turned their noses up, calling it hysteria, theatrics, a faith of the illiterate. But in a place where machines ate people alive, faith had to pour even hotter than blood.

It had no steeple, no stained glass, no bell tower, but it was the house of Abraham and Isaac, of Moses and Joshua, of the Lord thy
God. People tithed in Mercury dimes and buffalo nickels, and pews filled with old men who wore ancient black suit coats over overalls,
and young men in short-sleeved dress shirts and clip-on ties. Women sat plain, not one smear of lipstick or daub of makeup on their
faces, and not one scrap of lace at their wrists or necks. Their hair was long, because Paul wrote that "if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given her for a covering." Their hair and long dresses were always getting caught in the machines, but it was in the Scripture, so they obeyed. Some wore it pinned up for church, because of the heat, but before it was over hairpins would litter the
floor.

They listened as the preacher laid down a list of sins so complete it left a person no place to go but down.

"They preached it hard, so hard a feller couldn't live it," said Homer Barnwell, who went there as a boy.

The people, some gasping from the brown lung, ignored the weakness in their wind and pain in their chests and sang "I'll Fly...

 

I'm not saying that Rick Bragg is the only person who could have read his memoir, but he brings an intimacy and emotion to the work that another narrator would be hard-pressed to match. In addition, he's an accomplished raconteur. He offers up just enough of his native Alabama accent to give the work flavor but not so much that he can't be easily understood north of the Mason-Dixon line. His writing style is eminently listenable. He fills it with colorful metaphors, such as "It was a time when if you had a tattoo, you'd better be a Marine, and if you wore an earring, you'd better be a pirate." This is the kind of book you not only don't want to turn off at the end of a disc, you don't want the book itself to end. R.C.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

 

"Bragg crafts flowing sentences that vividly describe the southern Appalachian landscape and ways of life both old and new. . . . His father's story walks the line between humorous and heartbreaking . . . This book, much like his previous two memoirs, is lush with narratives about manhood, fathers and sons, families and the changing face of the rural South."

 

"Smooth and rich as bourbon."

 

"Bragg continues in the vein of his legendary storytelling, breathing life into a father he barely knew while learning to love a son."

 

"Rick Bragg has written a powerful and poignant book about his kin, the kind of people we hear about too seldom . . . At the end I shared Rick's pride and awe of what his family had endured."

 

"It is hard to think of a writer who reminds us more forcefully and wonderfully of what people and families are all about."

 

"Earthy, mischievous, yet gorgeous. . . . [Bragg's] tales . . . would not be out of place if they were told around a campfire."

 

"[Bragg] is every bit the equal of . . . Harper Lee and Truman Capote."

 

"[Bragg has] a true gift for great storytelling (the kind. . . that makes you think it's just a plain old story, until he gets to the end and you're either weeping or covered with goosebumps)."

 

"Here is a man with wit, devotion and a fierce sense of dignity."

 

"Bragg writes like his grandfather drank. . . . He cuts loose with wonderful flowering descriptive floods . . . that can cripple another writer with envy."

 

"An absolutely wonderful book."

 

"Rick Bragg writes like a man on fire. And All Over but the Shoutin' is a work of art. While reading this book, I fell in love with Rick Bragg's mother, Margaret Bragg, a hundred times. I felt like I was reading one of the prophets in the Old Testament when reading parts of this book. I thought of Melville, I thought of Faulkner. Because I love the English language, I knew I was reading one of the best books I've ever read. By explaining his life to the world, Rick Bragg explained part of my life to me. You feel things in every line this man writes. His sentences bleed on you. I wept when the book ended. I never met Rick Bragg in my life, but I called him up and told him he'd written a masterpiece, and I sent flowers to his mother."

 

"Searingly honest, beautifully written, All Over but the Shoutin' is perhaps the most courageous thing Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Bragg has ever written. Making his reputation on his 'dark gothic' stories of urban riots, community disasters, and Haitian bloodbaths, Bragg has never failed to record the grace and dignity of people who live their lives in the margins. All Over but the Shoutin' is one more such story. But it is braver because the marginal people he gives us are himself, a child of 'poor white Southern trash,' and his family--an alcoholic, mostly absent father, and an extraordinary mother, quietly heroic in the face of devastating poverty. Bragg looks down the corridors of his past with love, hate, humor, regret, self-doubt, and understanding. In the telling, he may occasionally flinch, but he never turns away."

 

"This is a great book: a poem disguised as a memoir, a gift from a son to his mother, a primer on reporting.... Language at its loveliest."

 

In his sad, beautiful, funny and moving memoir, All Over but the Shoutin', Rick Bragg gives us a report from the forgotten heart of "white trash"

 

"Bragg . . . has a strong voice and a sweeping style that, like his approach to newspaper writing, is rich, empathetic, and compelling. His memoir is a model of humility combined with pride in one's accomplishments."

 

"A record of life that has been harrowing, cruel and yet triumphant, written so beautifully he makes the book a marvel."

 

"A deeply affecting book. . . . Bragg captures the rhythms of small-town life with grace and pathos."

 

"Bragg tells about the South with such power and bone-naked love . . . he will make you cry."

 

The Prince of Frogtown by Rick Bragg
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