Ava's Man (Bragg)

Book Reviews
In less capable hands, this biography could have been mawkish and mundane. Instead, Bragg's telling of his maternal grandfather's life is eloquent and touching, and his spare prose is alive with fresh metaphors and memorable sentences. Bragg never knew Charlie Bundrum, who died prematurely at age 51 in 1958; the story of this proud, flawed, loving and much-loved hero of Depression-era Appalachia is derived from family and community oral history. Interestingly, this book emerged because readers of Bragg's bestselling book about his mother, Ava (All Over but the Shoutin'), wanted to understand the force that drove her to be such a strong figure. Few actors could have read this work as well as the author has. Bragg's Appalachian accent, slightly polished by Northern living, adds authenticity to the fine, funny and painful anecdotes that made up his grandfather's life and to the feelings each story encompasses. His smooth reading enhances the rhythms and sounds of his prose, rendering with genuine sincerity his deep admiration for his people and for the vanishing culture they represent.
Publishers Weekly


After the publication of Bragg's best-selling memoir All Over but the Shoutin', readers accused the author of "leaving out the good part." They wanted to know where he believed his mother's "heart and backbone came from, and where she inherited the strength and character to raise three boys alone." They also felt he had "short-shrifted" Charlie and Ava Bundrum, his mother's parents. Bragg's grandfather died before he was born, and his extended family, filled with fine storytellers, were conspicuously silent about his life. Upon questioning, he discovered that talking about his grandfather's life led to talking about his death and the grief all of his children still felt 42 years after he "was preached into the sky." On the day of Charlie's funeral, cars lined the blacktop for more than a mile. Deciding "a man like that deserved a book," Bragg interviewed family members and neighbors to tell his grandfather's story. As with his previous book, Bragg writes about poor people of the South with dignity and without condescension. The author reads with humor, affection, and pride; this is a splendid listening experience. —Pam Kingsbury, Alabama Humanities Fdn., Florence, AL.
Library Journal


The story of a man who could charm a bird off a wire, beat the tar out of a threat, dandle a baby, tend a still, and smile—no, live—right through the meanest poverty the South could throw at him, from New York Times reporter and Pulitzer-winner Bragg (All Over But the Shoutin'). Bragg's grandfather, Charlie Bundrum, died a year before Bragg was born, so the author "built him up from dirt level, using half-forgotten sayings, half-remembered stories, and a few yellowed, brittle, black-and-white photographs." Speaking in a lovely southern voice out of northern Georgia and Alabama, with a juke in its bones and metaphors to die for, Bragg brings not just Charlie but an entire time and place to life. Charlie was the son of another piece of work, a man who "largely disregarded any laws or influence outside his own will, and some people did not like to look him dead in the eye because it made them feel weak." No stranger to a dust-up himself, Charlie would take the law down a notch if it was too mettlesome, but he had a softer side—one that would play a white-hot banjo, buck-dance under the stars (and under the influence of his own good white whisky, which made him sing rather than cuss), and offer a helping hand whenever the need arose. Most important of Charlie's virtues, from the author's point of view, was the fact that "if he ever was good at one thing on this earth, it was being a daddy." Searching for work (sometimes, just for food), he'd move his family about the wild and dangerous South, a landscape of ridges and hollows and deep woods, ramshackle houses, muddy rivers, water moccasins, primeval catfish (which he caught from a boat made of two car hoods weldedtogether)—but he knew how to make his family feel secure and loved. A book that flashes with affection and respect for Charlie and the vanishing culture he represents, one we will be immensely the poorer for losing.
Kirkus Reviews