Rick Bragg is a story par excellence. So simply written [not simplisticly... then I would not bother to write this], yet capable of painting a mental picture that brings you into whatever the author is writing about. I hung out with guys like Rick and his cast of characters back in the day. Each line brings me back to where I used to be and into the new stories as the pages fly by. Great stuff!

I wanted to love this book. I was ready to. All Over But The Shouting is one of my favorite books of all time. Ava's Man was good but not great and the same can be said for The Prince of Frogtown. Not nearly as good stories as the first book. And it's kind of difficult to follow the characters. Not the switching back and forth from present to past. That was dealt with well using the shading on the chapter's about the boy. But during the chapters about his dad all the people telling stories and who they were talking about was confusing. And there just didn't seem to be the magical prose of All Over But The Shouting. This book is definitely worth buying and it's good but just not Great like I hoped.

With this title, The Prince of Frogtown, one expects a story akin to the tall tales of Uncle Remus, and Rick Bragg does not disappoint. He is a consummate storyteller in the southern tradition of "pull up a chair, and let me tell you about the time...." Here he closes the circle of family stories in which his "father occupied only a few pages, but lived between every line."

Marrying late, and instantly acquiring a ten-year-old son, prompted Bragg to look at himself as a father, and finally to explore the father he hardly knew as anything more than a drunken caricature. He goes in search of the real man that lived between the lines of his life's story.

Bragg journeys back and pulls up his chair beside those who remember to hear the stories of his father's life and times. To those stories, he adds his own recollections.

A vignette, "The Boy," prefaces each flashback chapter. These vignettes give us glimpses of Bragg as he learns to be a father to the boy. As he awkwardly makes his way in unfamiliar territory, he remarks, "The woman is mad at me a lot. I make her mad, being me. The boy never is. I walk in the door and the boy never seems disappointed in me."

The two stories running in tandem work well. I enjoyed seeing the Bragg of now in "The Boy" juxtaposed with the Bragg of then, seeing the father he is compared to the father he had.

In the stories of life with his wife and his step-son, we see the tug-of-war between the civil society he now inhabits with the harsh brash past of his and his family's past.

It is interesting to see him vacillate between accepting the boy with one breath and in the next describing him as one of those boys--the soft, spoiled, privileged ones--he remembers from his youth with disdain.

It is not always because of, but sometimes in spite of our life experiences that we become who we become. It is always a choice. I'm glad Rick Bragg chose to write for his life and share it with us.

The final chapter, "The Circle," is both preceded and followed by "The Boy" and the story stops on an up note. His mother and brother stand amid wildflowers on their garden's path. Rick and the boy are flying down the road in the old silver sports car, and we have one last look at Bragg still growing into being a father to the boy.

Perle Champion is a writer, artist, and photographer. Contact: [...]

Having read Rick Bragg's other works, I can say that this book not only didn't disappoint me in any way - it is as beautifully written as All Over But The Shoutin' and Ava's Man - but it also fulfilled a curiousty created by All Over But The Shoutin, in particular. It dug in to just who Rick's father was and created a three dimensional man, giving those of us who have followed this family saga an understanding of what made that man tick. There is tremendous sadness in this understanding, but Rick manages to weave in humor that will simply touch your heart. Watching the relationship develop with The Boy through passages so descriptive it was as if I could see the two of them together...more than once I found myself with a lump in my throat...and more than once I beamed with joy (particularly at the church league basketball game)! These "characters" are so rich, you'll forget that these are real people and not some beautifully crafted works of fiction. Very well done!

I read all night. I couldn't help it. This book was impossible to put down. Rick Bragg sure knows how to turn a phrase. The images he paints with words are colorful and packed with emotion. He moves from his troubled relationship with his father to his fumbling attempt to be a part of his stepson's life. The unexpected discoveries he makes about both of them makes this a wonderful read.

Rick Bragg never fails to mesmerize and entertain...and oh, what a way with words! 'Prince' is my favorite in this trilogy, but I'd heartily recommend any of them. A truly remarkable memoir, touching, engaging, laugh-out-loud funny, and tender in its portrayal of Alabama.
I live in Florida now, and travel back and forth to a mountain place we have near my birthplace in Anniston. Rick Bragg never fails to make me wish I were there...

Similar to John Sayles' great film, MATEWAN, Rick Bragg's THE PRINCE OF FROGTOWN focuses on industry in the early 1900s. Without effective labor unions, blue-collar workers faced degradation, low wages, poor housing and dependency on the 'company store' for its meals.

In MATEWAN, the workers fought hard for their union, and, after many years and deaths, defeated the right-wing owners of the coal mines. Such victory was not seen in Bragg's view of Jacksonville, Alabama's 100-year-old mill. No, here the union was demoralized, the workers turned to drink, and families broke up so that the 'boss' could reap vast amounts of money.

Rick Bragg writes of these events with compassion and anger, coming to terms eventually with his own dad's anger and neglect. Many tried to leave the mill; few succeeded. Most simply succumbed to 'white lightning'.

Bragg's memoir sheds light on this very dark trauma. But the mills, chicken factories and coal mines of the south still remain stark, scary places, mostly because the south has strong anti-union laws. We can blame the rich, right-wing aristocratic owners for these inhumane laws.

Who said slavery was defeated in the south?

by Larry Rochelle, author of BURNT COFFEE and TEN MILE CREEK

It's amazing how Rick Bragg has pieced together the character of his father from talking to relatives and friends who knew him to reveal a person he himself didn't even get to really know. I'm not quite finished with the book and will be reluctant for it to end. So I am intrigued to find out more about 'boy' and 'woman' and how that ends. We have saved the write-up in Southern Living to keep with our copies of the first two auto-biographical books - "All Over but the Shouting" and "Ava's Man".

I have been a fan of Rick Bragg for a long time..I've seen him on CSPAN at the book festivals..read his books and listened to him on tape...and I think " The Prince of Frogtown" is one of his best.. I bought the CD version and there is something soothing in his voice..the sadness comes through, the southern softness. The story he told of his alcoholic father is sad..but loving. There is no bitterness...he is telling a story like it was..and with a love of a child for his father..regardless of the pain he caused his family. It's not a happy story, but a nostalgic, loving story and i will listen to it many times before the CD wears out..

I first read Rick Bragg about ten years ago, and I have been struck by his writing ever since. And in The Prince of Frogtown I got to enjoy his writing again. This book, like his others, give faces and voices to people too long ignored. He uncovers a piece of the South that makes you proud to say you live below the Mason-Dixon. But most of all, his writing and storytelling are so well done I feel a little guilty every time I finish a chapter. I'm not sure why exactly -- maybe because I'm getting to see into lives I don't know I've paid a high enough price to get the priviledge. I deliberately read the book as slowly as I could because I know the sadness that comes with finishing a great piece of work. He reveals the greatness in regular people and makes one hope that maybe a little of that same greatness is in each of us.

Rick Bragg continues the family history and fills in most of the blanks.
Well written, and worth the read. Especially interesting to those who have a connection to this part of Alabama.

As a long time fan of Rick Bragg I anxiously awaited the arrival of this latest book. I did get bogged down with alot of the chapters of history(that is my fault, not his) The chapters of The Boy were my favorite. I was pleasantly surprised how someone who was raised like Rick was had all of that softness under there. In my opinion his sensitivity paralled that of Harper Lee.

This is my favorite by Bragg, but I love all of his books. This one reads like a novel and I enjoyed every bit of it.

I first fell in love with Rick Bragg's writing, and his various family members, while reading "All Over But the Shoutin'"--one of my favorite all-time non-fiction books. That love affair continued, though with not quite the same intensity, during the reading of "Ava's Man." Bragg has proven himself to be a writer of Southern wit and pathos, not to mention a splendid chronicler of the human condition.

"The Prince of Frogtown" is Bragg's third foray into family history and Alabama roots, giving great peeks into mill town life and the currents of whiskey and class-distinction that played out in his past. In "Shoutin'" we got to meet his mother, in particular. "Ava's Man" represented his grandfather. Here, "The Prince" is Bragg's father, an off-and-on figure on the stage of Bragg's childhood. We also see how that limited parental role affects Bragg's own more recent and unlikely role as stepfather.

The book's poignancy finds its greatest power in this contrast between fatherly figures. At times, the historical aspects drag a bit, but they find their strength again when revealed through the more recent experiences of Bragg and "the boy," as he refers to the son of his wife.

It's a formula that works, and by any other standard would be topnotch. By Bragg's standards, however, it didn't tug as many laughs and tears from me as his previous books. The magic is still here, in flashes. He can spend two pages describing a fallen angel with perfect teeth, then, in one understated sentence, cause my heart to soften. "The Prince of Frogtown" is an ode to a bygone era, and an attempt to stay relevant in a changing America.

I completed The Prince of Frogtown in three sittings, as I did with Ava's Man and All Over But the Shoutin'. I also had the pleasure of knowing "The Woman" when we were grad students and adjunct instructors in Memphis, and I can tell you without any reservation that Bragg is not kidding when he defines The Woman as a strong woman and a loving mom who isn't inclined to tolerate a lot of bullhooey. The best side of this new tome is Bragg's ability - as always - to bring absolute color to his father's life and deeds (mostly misdeeds - to say the least) in a way that only a Southerner could have experienced it.

The contrast between the father's stories are neatly intertwined with brief chapters on The Boy (The Woman's son by a previous marriage - now Bragg's stepson). It is "The Boy" chapters that bring heart to the book. You see how two completely opposite world's smack Bragg wholehearted upon becoming a step-parent to a child who hasn't the slightest comprehension or experience in and around Bragg's world and youth. In the beginning, Bragg is baffled that The Boy doesn't know how to fight, sheds tears on occasion, and owns a wealth of electronic gadgets. Essesntially, a child who is a million miles from Bragg's youth.

The book is an incredible study of contrasts, colorfully told with a mixture of sorrow, hilarity and personal growth by both Bragg and The Boy. Though The Woman does not really play much in the book, her loving, reproachful and stable persona shine throughout without Bragg's invasion of her world.

I highly recommend this book for those who are fans of Bragg's, Conroy's, Styron's or other writers who tell of lives that were very hard, but manage to see the light through others and ultimately within themselves.

I have long been a serious fan of Rick Bragg. I happened upon him during a reading at a local bookstore 9 years ago and have been hooked since. I never pass up an opportunity to hear him speak and have been anticipating the release of this book for over a year.

His new book does not disappoint. One moment I was laughing out loud and making my husband listen to me read passages from the book...the next I was all but sobbing. Bragg tells the tragic story of his fathers life and contrasts this with tales of being a new stepfather. It makes for an incredibly moving read. He is able to use the English language and southern dialogue like few people can.

Bragg's two previous family related books were easier reads, but the stories included in this book are wonderful and well worth the read.

This is the best book Bragg has written. I live in Jacksonville and can remember some of the people he writes about. I finished the book in 2 sessions. It was a easy read about a mill village town. Living in the "country" I could relate to the "village kids". Keep up the good work Rick.