Ava's Man by Rick Bragg

If you’re from northeast Alabama and you read Bragg’s book, you may feel like you’re reading about your own ancestry. At times, you may cringe at the actions of some of these ancestors, but deep down, you know they’re good people and you’re proud to call them family. I felt this way reading Ava’s Man, and it’s not just because Bragg’s grandmother, Ava, went to my hometown school. It’s because Bragg captures the essence of being a from-the-country, homegrown Alabamian. Just listen to Bragg’s description of his family’s meals:

“They lived mostly on beans and bread...On every stove, a pot of pintos simmered, a ham hock or a thick piece of fatback swimming in thick brown soup. In every stove, a golden cake of cornbread baked in an iron skillet…The women would put a pone of bread on a dinner plate and cover the top with another dinner plate, because that’s how it was done and always will be...And sometimes, for a change, people just crumbled up a little cornbread in a glass or a bowl and poured cold buttermilk or sweet milk over it, and ate it with a spoon. They chopped hot Spanish onions up in it, and that was a meal.” (49)

I’m not sure if everyone from northeast Alabama ate this way, but I know my family did and still does from time to time. While some of what Bragg writes may seem unbelievable, it’s passages like the one above that reek of authenticity to me. I love it.

Plus, he’s funny. I laughed out loud multiple times. One story that was particularly funny was about a guy who was seriously injured in a fight. Some of the men in Bragg’s family had a way of finding themselves in violent situations. One night, a man named Jeff was stabbed multiple times in a fight on Newt Morrison’s farm. By the time the bleeding stopped, the onlookers believed that nothing could be done to save Jeff because he’d lost so much blood. When asked if he needed to be taken to a doctor, even Jeff said, “No, I reckon I’ll just lay here and die.” Jeff “waited to die for a long, long time. Finally, after a few days, Newt told him that if he wasn’t going to die he sure did want his porch back, and Jeff got up and walked on down the road” (66). Unbelievable? Sure. Funny? Absolutely.

Bragg just has a way with words. I may be biased because I am Southern and I appreciate that he speaks my language. Whatever the reason, I really enjoyed this book. I laughed, cried, and made people listen as I read certain passages to them. To me, that’s the mark of a good book.