Rick Bragg is a well-known southern author who has a voice that really captures the times and places he’s describing. Ava’s Man is no exception.
Ava’s Man is a love letter to the grandfather Rick never met: a man’s man from a different time who worked hard, fought hard, and loved his family with a ferocity that exposes his ultimately tender heart. This book is a tough look at the Depression and its effects on the south, and how those effects still reverberate here today.
I tend to shy away from southern literature. It is often too folksy for me, feeling forced and inauthentic. Never in my life have a said something like “well smack me with a frying pan!” or not known proper dining etiquette or how to use the Internet. Southern literature, to me, has a tendency to romanticize the saddest bits of any culture- poverty, ignorance, and want.
...but Rick Bragg captures something here that feels true and real. He details the hardships of a family doing the best they can, of the American dream for stability and the hardscrabble ways many fought to attain it. The prose feels real because it is; these words were really said, these ideas were really had.
My favorite line from the book comes from a funeral scene (I’ll paraphrase): “They went on about what a wonderful father he was, which was absolutely true. And they went on about what a great husband he was, which was mostly true and besides it was a funeral.”
I would highly recommend Ava’s Man!
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