Search - Ava's Man

One of the best memoirs I've had the pleasure of reading. It could have been my grandparents in the book! Loved it...a great writer.

This book was awesome. It totally captured my attention and I could hardly put it down. If you're from the South or have relatives down South, you will get a kick going down memory lane with the author.

This is actually the author's story of his grandfather but it reads like a novel, full of some wonderfully interesting and "real" characters. It's more than just the story of this one man, though. It's the story of all of the working class poor in the south during the depression and beyond. Tt's the story of my dad who worked the cotton fields in rural Texas growing up before the war, and of all families everywhere who struggled to make it through hard times. It'll make you laugh, and cry, and wish our families today had more of that elusive "something" that is so lacking in modern society. Thank you, Rick Bragg, for this incredible book!

I liked this book a lot - you don't need to be from the south to enjoy the stories and get a real picture of what life was like for these folks. I found the dialect a bit much at times (the dropped "g's" were rather annoying - "gettin' and grinnin' and pickin' and peelin'") and towards the end the story got a bit long, but it was definitely a labor of love about someone who was larger than life that the author sadly never got to know, and that really transcended the story.

Wish I could have given this book four and three-quarters stars. I liked this one only slightly less than "all Over But The Shoutin'." Maybe this is because the subject is one generation removed from the author, because it is certainly not the writing.

I loved this book. It completely sucked me in, and I read it in one sitting. It was amazing that it was about Bragg's own grandfather. I can't imagine all of the research it must have taken to write, but it reads so easily. I would definitely recommend!