Rick Bragg

"Speck is not a good boy. He is a terrible boy, a defiant, self-destructive, often malodorous boy, a grave robber and screen door moocher who spends his days playing chicken with the FedEx man, picking fights with thousand-pound livestock and rolling in donkey manure and his nights howling at the moon. He has been that way since the moment he appeared on the ridgeline behind Rick Bragg's house. Speck arrived in Rick's life at a moment of looming uncertainty,...

"Rick Bragg closes his circle of family stories with a tale of fathers and sons inspired by his own relationship with his ten-year-old stepson. Having married a mother, he discovers that he is unsuited to fatherhood, to this boy in particular, a boy accustomed to love and affection rather than violence and neglect--a boy wholly unlike the child Rick once was. With the weight of this new boy tugging at him, Rick sets out to understand his father, his...

"From the best-selling, Pulitzer prize-winning author of All Over But the Shoutin' and The Best Cook in the World, a collection of his irresistible columns from Southern Living and Garden & Gun A collection of wide-ranging and endearingly personal columnsby the celebrated author, newspaper columnist, and Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg, culled from his best-loved pieces in Southern Living and Garden & Gun. From his love of Tupperware ("My Affair...

"Margaret Bragg does not own a single cookbook. She measures in "dabs" and "smidgens" and "tads" and "you know, hon, just some." She cannot be pinned down on how long to bake corn bread ("about 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the mysteries of your oven"). Her notion of farm-to-table is a flatbed truck. But she can tell you the secrets to perfect mashed potatoes, corn pudding, redeye gravy, pinto beans and hambone, stewed cabbage, short ribs, chicken...