When this native Alabama author first introduced readers to his family in All Over But the Shoutin’, he paid tribute to a good-hearted, hardworking mother alongside a rough-edged portrait of an alcoholic, abusive father. In his second book, Ava’s Man, Rick Bragg discovered the life and character of his maternal grandfather, a man he never knew. This third (and last) book--The Prince of Frogtown--that completes the family memoir does something unexpected. The author--finding himself married and a new father to a 10-year-old boy--searches for the good in his own father while struggling to find his own way along the unscripted path of parenthood.

Chapters alternate throughout this touching, funny, and illuminating memoir. One section revolves around “the boy,” as the writer refers to his new stepson. “I believed I was catching him at a good age. He was house-trained, past diapering but still too young to borrow my car or ask me questions on sex, about which, of course, I would be forced to lie.”

Every other chapter peels away more layers about a father he never really knew and the need to better understand him. “It was hypocritical to condemn such a careless man, after my own careless, selfish life, but I did it. I sawed my family tree off at the fork, and made myself a man with half a history,” writes the author.

That history feels complete at the end of this book. Bragg has made peace with Charles Bragg and his legacy. “In the last weeks of his life I had reoccurred to him one last time, and he gave me a box of books,” writes the author of his father’s last days. His son leaves readers hungering for more words and more books--a Southern legacy of his own.

Rick’s Picks
Asked about his favorite Southern authors, Rick Bragg shares his choices.

“I just reread Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men and Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove. That is the gold standard for a great American novel. I read William Faulkner for the beautiful lines. Eudora Welty wrote some of the most beautiful short stories ever written. I love Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain, but I hated its ending. I love Richard Ford’s elegance.

“Pat Conroy has been as influential as anything. He showed me how to write about dysfunction and love. I read Tennessee Williams and Willie Morris. James Lee Burke can make you see a sky as good as anyone. Carl Hiaasen can make you laugh at murder.

“I love historical fiction. In Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy writes about cruelty, harsh and beautiful. You live it, see it, and put your hands on it. Seeing how others handle it helps.

“Southern writers have a grip on life. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, she took the best of us and the worst of us and captured it. I have read that four times.”

Read more about Rick Bragg

"What We're Reading" is from the May 2008 issue of Southern Living.