Rick Bragg has documented actual facts of life in some parts of the South, as so many children knew it to be and he has the talent to express. Having to exist on what you could grub from the dirt or sell what was made from corn or rye, shows a type of people not found any where else. Strong, unselfish women that lived and died without the honor they were entitled. Men that were uneducated so far as books enabled but a scholar in quiet resolve.