Click here to listen to Rick Bragg in his own words.

Writers who move us with their words and images don’t always match who they are in person. That’s not the case with Rick Bragg. The still-boyish author from Jacksonville, Alabama, speaks in perfect prose from the get-go, even stopping in at a favorite restaurant in his home town.

"This place has been here since I’ve been alive. I know I’m home when I walk in the door,” says Rick of the meat 'n' three aromas of the Village Inn. His eyes crinkle with good humor. “Even our Chinese restaurant has sweet tea. My doctor won’t let me have sweet tea, nor anything on this plate. He has unreasonable expectations.”

The voice seems boy-next-door familiar, if only through his writings. In All Over but the Shoutin’ and Ava’s Man, readers have become acquainted with his family—especially his mother, Margaret, and her struggles to raise three boys while coping with an alcoholic and abusive husband.

Hitting the bookstores this month is the third and final book that completes Rick’s memoir. The Prince of Frogtown attempts to color in the outline of a father previously described mostly in black and white. It also puzzles its way through the amazement and sometimes amusement of him being newly married and a sudden stepfather to a 10-year-old boy.

A Long Road Home
“The book took five years,” says Rick, between bites of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and turnip greens. “This closes the circle of books on family. When I decided to do the book on Dad, I thought about how I’ve interviewed a lot of men in prison. They are there because of their worst moment. It’s not all they are. We were my Dad’s worst moments,” Rick says.

“But who was Charles Bragg? I wanted to find people who had shared a good moment with him.”

Rick interviewed his father's relatives and playmates, coworkers and drinking buddies. He has made peace with the story of his family and with his father. “I have achieved closure after this last book,” Rick says. “All Over But the Shoutin’ was designed to honor my mother. I always knew I would have to close the circle.”

“I did Ava’s Man because I wanted to. I wanted to know who he (maternal grandfather) was in a good way. That book taught me you can discover a man with a book.”

Margaret, the Boy, and Miniature Donkeys
Rick made sure that his mother, Margaret Bragg, read the newest book and okayed its contents. The mother who nurtured her son’s love of words by buying encyclopedias from the grocery store lives in a gray log cabin on the outskirts of Jacksonville.

A mule, a crippled goat, colorful game roosters, and two miniature donkeys serve as her companions. “It’s the only thing she’s ever asked for,” says Rick of the small creatures.

His mother is gracious, with a soft voice and warm handshake. Tall and quiet, Margaret relishes having a new boy in the family. “He just turned 13,” says Margaret of Rick’s stepson Jacob. “He’s just a good boy. He don’t think he’s grown. He hugs me. I tell him he won’t never get too old to hug me. I’m partial to boys.”

Both mother and son tell about Jake’s catching red snapper in the Gulf. “He caught more fish than me. He wanted that in the book, but it was too late,” Rick says.

Margaret claims her traveling days are over. She visited New York when Rick’s first book came out and again when he won the Pulitzer prize. She’s content now to stay home and feed her donkeys each day promptly at 3. “I know where everything is here,” she says. “I do walk to the mailbox. I enjoy it. I know it’s good for me.”

In his wide-ranging newspaper career, Rick has lived in Miami, New York, New Orleans, and Atlanta. He studied for a year at Harvard. And along with the books on his family, Rick also authored a biography of Jessica Lynch, I Am a Soldier, Too. Things have settled down for the time being. Rick lives with wife Dianne and stepson Jacob in Tuscaloosa, where he teaches writing at The University of Alabama.

The Next Turn
“I’m getting to like Tuscaloosa,” says Rick of his latest foray. “What surprised me about teaching was how much outside work there is. People said it was hard. I thought, ‘How could it be hard? You go home at 3, right?’ No, you don’t. I’d say, 'hell, it ain’t like roofing.'

“I learned that the work in teaching is after the classroom. I’ve fallen in love with that. I love talking about the craft of writing. The writing is always going to be the lion at the door…or the wolf at the door,” he says, laughing.

Next in line is a novel. Rick even has the title all figured out. “I think it will be Loose Women From Spartanburg,” he claims, eyes crinkling with laughter. "I even have the first line: ‘The carnival owner never really liked midgets. They were always getting drunk off a thimble full of liquor and falling off their Shetland ponies.’ " After the novel, he plans a collection of essays on the mill village, which once sustained and employed the people—his people—in Jacksonville. Rick takes working seriously.

“Rudy Abbott here in Calhoun County told me he grew up from working people. ‘People like you and me can’t fail,’ he said.” Rick added, “I’ve always done what I wanted to. But I knew there better be some way to make a living. You have to take care of your people.”

Coming Home
So much has been made of the theory that people can’t go home again after having left to chart their own course. Rick doesn’t see it that way. “The reason people say they can’t come home—they can’t find the things they came to expect. I can live without sushi. People change as they go away. They expect home to have changed with them.”

Rick continues, “I love the places I saw. But saying you can’t come home again is saying 'I’m too good for home.' A lot of Southerners feel uncomfortable when they come home. A whole lot of us feel uncomfortable everywhere else.”

It’s 3 p.m., and Rick helps his mother feed the donkeys, Bucky and Mimi. They discuss how to protect the ducks they plan to buy for the pond. He talks of his brothers, Sam and Mark, and how his people have always worked with their hands.

“This was hard for me to do and tough for me to get,” Rick says of the final book. “I wanted to end it with one that would matter. These people are the soul of the region,” Rick says.

This region and its people couldn’t ask for a better voice than Rick Bragg.

"Rick Bragg: At Home With Words" is from the May 2008 issue of Southern Living.