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Ava's Man

4.15 of 5 stars 4.15 · rating details · 2,626 ratings · 314 reviews

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All Over but the Shoutin’ continues his personal history of the Deep South with an evocation of his mother’s childhood in the Appalachian foothills during the Great Depression, and the magnificent story of the man who raised her.

Charlie Bundrum was a roofer, a carpenter, a whiskey-maker, a fisherman who knew every inch of the Coosa Rive...more The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All Over but the Shoutin’ continues his personal history of the Deep South with an evocation of his mother’s childhood in the Appalachian foothills during the Great Depression, and the magnificent story of the man who raised her.

Charlie Bundrum was a roofer, a carpenter, a whiskey-maker, a fisherman who knew every inch of the Coosa River, made boats out of car hoods and knew how to pack a wound with brown sugar to stop the blood. He could not read, but he asked his wife, Ava, to read him the paper every day so he would not be ignorant. He was a man who took giant steps
in rundown boots, a true hero whom history would otherwise have overlooked.

In the decade of the Great Depression, Charlie moved his family twenty-one times, keeping seven children one step ahead of the poverty and starvation that threatened them from every side. He worked at the steel mill when the steel was rolling, or for a side of bacon or a bushel of peaches when it wasn’t. He paid the doctor who delivered his fourth daughter, Margaret—Bragg’s mother—with a jar of whiskey. He understood the finer points of the law as it applied to poor people and drinking men; he was a banjo player and a buck dancer who worked off fines when life got a little sideways, and he sang when he was drunk, where other men fought or cussed. He had a talent for living.

His children revered him. When he died, cars lined the blacktop for more than a mile.

Rick Bragg has built a soaring monument to the grandfather he never knew—a father who stood by his family in hard times and left a backwoods legend behind—in a book that blazes with his love for his family, and for a particular stretch of dirt road along the Alabama-Georgia border. A powerfully intimate piece of American history as it was experienced by the working people of the Deep South, a glorious record of a life of character, tenacity and indomitable joy and an unforgettable tribute to a vanishing culture, Ava’s Man is Rick Bragg at his stunning best.(less)

Hardcover, 272 pages

Published August 21st 2001 by Knopf

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Jan 18, 2011 Snotchocheez rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In 2004, I (by happenstance, if not a strange, whimsical predestination) found myself uprooted from 35 years of stasis in Los Angeles, and replanted in semi-rural Northeast Alabama. Many of my friends and acquaintances back home (and, heck, most people I meet here) wonder why I'd do something that crazy. I really don't have an explanation for any of them, but after reading Rick Bragg's brilliant love-letter to NE Alabama and his family ("Ava's Man"), I can direct any questioners of my sanity to...more In 2004, I (by happenstance, if not a strange, whimsical predestination) found myself uprooted from 35 years of stasis in Los Angeles, and replanted in semi-rural Northeast Alabama. Many of my friends and acquaintances back home (and, heck, most people I meet here) wonder why I'd do something that crazy. I really don't have an explanation for any of them, but after reading Rick Bragg's brilliant love-letter to NE Alabama and his family ("Ava's Man"), I can direct any questioners of my sanity to this book to glean why I might possibly have found my life (and my home) here, in a place where the 21st century struggles to catch up with the rest of the country.

Had I not been recommended this book by a friend of mine, I probably wouldn't have given Mr. Bragg's account of life here (and more specifically, of his grandfather Charlie Bundrum) a second glace. Biographies tend to bore me senseless, and upon encountering this book at Guntersville Library (with a visage of a sepia-toned nondescript nattily-dressed depression-era man) I thought it'd be a snooze-fest.

Needless to say, it's not. While I live today not more than 40 minutes from the Coosa River (whose banks were in proximity of many of the places the Bundrum family relocated to to escape the ravages of poverty in Depression-era Alabama), the book's message (while South-centric) is absolutely universal. At first perusal, it just seems like a fawning tribute by a former-Alabamian to his grandfather. When you dig a little deeper, you discover a burbling, vibrant pulse coursing through the book's veins. There's much more here than meets the eye. Mr. Bragg (a Pulitzer Prize winner for Feature Writing in 1996 while writing for the New York Times at their Atlanta desk, and a dyed-in-the wool Alabamian) brings his talents to the fore in providing a patchwork pastiche describing the jubilation, the heartbreak, the enduring (and unbreakable) ties that that bind the Bundrum family together in one of the most adverse of scenarios imaginable.

Mr. Bragg does in 250 pages what I'd never be able to do: describe (big ugly warts and all) my newly adopted home, and explain (concisely, and universally) its appeal to me. The best I can do is sing the book's praises to every potential reader I encounter, and hope that some take my advice and just read the damn book, already. (In light of the fact that despite the book's settings being one hour north and west of here, and that a whole chapter is devoted to the town of Guntersville, AL where I live, and that I checked this book (written in 2001) out from Guntersville Library, and find from the "date due" stamped page that only FIVE of my fellow patrons checked it out before me, I've certainly got a lot of work to do).(less)

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Mar 29, 2009 Wendy Baker rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Unflinching look at poverty that did and can exist in our country, and the families that somehow manage to survive. This book also made me a little homesick for my own family, and probably had a hand in us moving back to Atlanta. Good stuff.

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Apr 11, 2012 Ginger Bollinger rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I enjoyed this book very much as I could picture these characters in some of the stories I've heard about my own grand and great-grandparents. Times were hard and people worked accordingly. Family was all-important. People stayed in one general locale, even though they might move around a lot within that general vicinity. Resourcefulness in taking care of oneself and one's family was not unique and took many forms. Even though some of the characters were pretty rough, I would have enjoyed meetin...more

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Dec 03, 2011 Chloé rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Books I can't bring myself to finish get 1*... With this one I couldn't bring myself to read more than a quarter. From the praise I read both on the inside jacket and on this site I was expecting Rick Bragg to be up there with Jeannette Walls or Lac Su but I was sadly disappointed. The prologue warns of what's to come, itself being long winded, gushing and largely unnecessary. From the little I read it seems that Charlie was a likeable enough man but I didn't feel saddened by their poverty, whic...more

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Sep 14, 2011 Lori L (She Treads Softly) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In Ava's Man Rick Bragg has written a unique tribute to his maternal grandfather, Charlie Bundrum, a man he never knew but one he learned about through the stories of others. Bragg introduces us to Charlie through the carefully written anecdotes he has collected from those who knew Charlie personally. Charlie was a husband, father, roofer, and bootlegger. He was a man who lived by his own personal code in a specific area and place in time.

Charlie Bundrum was "so beloved, so missed, that the mere...more In Ava's Man Rick Bragg has written a unique tribute to his maternal grandfather, Charlie Bundrum, a man he never knew but one he learned about through the stories of others. Bragg introduces us to Charlie through the carefully written anecdotes he has collected from those who knew Charlie personally. Charlie was a husband, father, roofer, and bootlegger. He was a man who lived by his own personal code in a specific area and place in time.

Charlie Bundrum was "so beloved, so missed, that the mere mention of his death would make them [his grown daughters] cry forty-two years after he was preached into the sky."(pg. 9) "He grew up in hateful poverty, fought it all his life and died with nothing but a family that worshiped him and a name that gleams like new money." (pg. 12) Bragg said that he wrote this book in response to those who told him that he "short-shrifted them in the first book, especially about Charlie, about Ava, about their children" (pg.13) After Bragg's All Over but the Shoutin' readers wanted to know more about the people who were his mother's parents.

In this tribute to his grandfather, Bragg has crafted an amazing, descriptive portrait of his grandfather, a man who lived in crushing poverty during the Depression. He protected his children at all costs. He liked to drink the "likker" he distilled, yet he was a drinker who would laugh rather than get angry. "Even as a boy, he thought people who steal were trash, real trash. 'And a man who'll lie,' he said, even back then, 'will steal.' " (pg. 53)

This biography of Charlie Bundrum is a truly amazing tribute. Bragg's use of language clearly evokes the time and place as well as establishing the characters. This is a memoir that could have become maudlin, but I really think that the quality of Bragg's writing sustains the narrative and elevates it above the ordinary. This is a genuine, honest, portrait of the grandfather Bragg never knew except through the stories of others and a book that should be treasured for generations to come.

Very Highly Recommended - one of the best; http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/

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Jun 09, 2011 Karima rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is my third Bragg book (ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTIN' and THE PRINCE OF FROGTOWN)and I have thoroughly enjoyed them all. I recommend listening to them because the reading,in authentic southern/appalachian dialect, captures the essence in a way that this northerner (me) could not do on her own.
Bragg has done his family proud.

From Publishers Weekly
Following up his bestselling memoir, All Over But the Shoutin', Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bragg again creates a soulful, poignant portrait of w...more This is my third Bragg book (ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTIN' and THE PRINCE OF FROGTOWN)and I have thoroughly enjoyed them all. I recommend listening to them because the reading,in authentic southern/appalachian dialect, captures the essence in a way that this northerner (me) could not do on her own.
Bragg has done his family proud.

From Publishers Weekly
Following up his bestselling memoir, All Over But the Shoutin', Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bragg again creates a soulful, poignant portrait of working-class Southern life by looking deep into his own family history. This new volume recounts the life of his maternal grand father, Charlie Bundrum, who died in 1958, one year before Rick was born. Lacking a grandfather, the New York Times reporter sets out to build one "from dirt level, using half-forgotten sayings, half-remembered stories and a few yellowed, brittle, black-and-white photographs."His investigations in the Appalachian foothills along the Georgia-Alabama border turn up a beloved, larger-than-life rambler who inspired backwoods legend among contemporaries, undying devotion from his wife, Ava, and unabashed love and awe from his large extended family. Big-hearted but flawed, Bundrum was a man of contradiction. Genuinely devoted to his wife and children, he was a tenuous provider (a roofer by trade, he also cooked and frequently tasted his own moonshine) who fiercely defended his clan from trouble and hardship even as he occasionally brought it on them. He lived by a code of country justice that tolerated brawling with lawmen but disdained bullying, distinguished "good, solid biblical cursing" from mere "ugly talk," and forswore spitting in the presence of ladies.Bragg strives for an unvarnished portrait and succeeds, mostly balancing tremendous affection for his grandfather with the recognition that Bundrum, the last of his kind and a connection to a culture of backwoods self-sufficiency long dead in the South, deserves and would demand an honest rendering. "He is so much more precious smelling of hot cornbread and whiskey than milk and honey," Bragg writes. "The one thing I am dead sure of is that his ghost... would have haunted me forever if I had whitewashed him." A man like that, he concludes, "would, surely, want a legacy with some pepper on it."Bragg delivers, with deep affection, fierce familial pride, and keen, vivid prose that's as sharp and bone-bright as a butcher knife. In this pungent paean to his grandfather, Bragg also chronicles a vanished South that like the once-wild Coosa River Charlie liked to ply in homemade boats is becoming too tamed to accommodate those who would carve out a proud if hardscrabble living on its margins.
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Jan 19, 2010 Kay Johnson rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This follow-up to All Over But the Shoutin' shows us once again why Rick Bragg was honored with the Pulitzer Prize. This story chronicles the life of his grandfather, who Bragg never knew. He relied on the stories and legends handed down from family. Bragg's family is a sort of antithesis to the Tara and Twelve Oaks crowd of Gone with the Wind Fame. Having grown up in the south myself, I learned a great deal about southerners, like me, who aren't part of the mint-julep, debutante South. No, our...more

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Mar 27, 2011 Erin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My first experience in Alabama occurred in 1995 in Enterprise, AL. It was there that this Catholic girl first learned about "being saved." In 2010 I returned to the lower Alabama area and the Florida panhandle to once again live in the highly God fearing, heavily Protestant, Deep South. I am sad that I finished this book. I enjoyed reading about Charlie. I am happy to walk in the red clay, see those muddy rivers he loved, and to live near those foothills that this story brings to life. I got in...more

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Sep 29, 2010 Deb rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, memoir, nook, favorites

Author Rick Bragg tells the story of his grandfather, Charlie Bundrum, using the stories told by Charlie's children and grandchildren during a family reunion in 1999. Charlie is a larger-than-life character; a tall, strong man who fiercely loved and protected his family all his life. His story is set in the time of the Great Depression, in rural Alabama.

My favorite quote:

"He ought to have a monument," Travis says, "because there ain't no more like him. All his kind are gone.

In a time when a nat...more

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Mar 28, 2007 James rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A wonderfully gritty biography of the author's grandfather, whom he knows only through family legend, sung beautifully in the voice of the south. Dripping in metaphors and history, it left me whistful for my own past and thankful to be among my family as I absorbed it. As it's sat around the house it's been picked up by almost everyone and has developed an impromptu waiting list. I'm off to drop it at my Grandma Amy's right now.

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Apr 15, 2011 Bonnie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, biography

Imagine sitting around a campfire...
Imagine a boy telling amazingly funny, sad, joyous, devastating stories about his family... Imagine being so enthralled you experience all the emotions experienced by those family members being remembered...

Ava's Man is the life story of the authors' grandfather Charlie who did not merely exist but lived during the depression era on the border of Georgia and Alabama, crossing it many times to keep his family together. Charlie is one of the men who made it th...more

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Nov 09, 2010 Kathy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read All Over But the Shoutin' about 10 years ago, and thought it amazing. Why I have waited so long to read another Rick Bragg book, I have no idea.

Ava's Man is the story of Charlie Bundrum, Mr. Bragg's grandfather, who died before he was born. It is a living story though, vibrant and powerful, showing why Charlie Bundrum is a legend in his own family, but also showing his flaws.

Mr. Bragg has a wonderful facility with words, and there are so many delightful turns of phrase in this book. You...more

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Feb 21, 2009 Eileen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was the River Read's selection at my library a couple of years ago. Not so long ago the rural South was a very different place to live and where poverty was endemic. It was hard to make money and moonshine was both a cash crop and a killer.

Rick Bragg tells his family's tale with honesty and great sensitivity. Who says you can't go home again!

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Aug 27, 2008 Jan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Poverty may deprive men and women of luxuries, special treatment, the peace of knowing you'll have a house over your head and food on the table, medicine for your babies, help for the injured, clothing to keep out the cold, but poverty does not prevent anyone from being strong, loving his or her family, or fighting for what is right and true (or "just because" on a Saturday night)!

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Dec 29, 2008 Vanessa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really loved this book. Bragg is a natural-born storyteller. It's funny that this book is a biography about his grandfather, but feels so familiar. It's a book about a man who was far but perfect but impacted his family profoundly, just like most of our grandfathers. Also, if you know anything about commodity cheese, there's a section about it that will make you laugh.

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Mar 31, 2013 Rob rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite-authors, history, southern-lit

Rick Bragg has quickly become one of my favorite authors. He writes in a way that is so easy to read, so enjoyable, and so familiar. Reading his writing brings so many of my own memories to mind. In telling his stories and the stories of his family, he is telling so many parts of my own story. While his history and mine are so different, they are also so similar. He makes the south come alive. He brings the south to life in a way that is romantic and realistic all rolled up into one. I wish I co...more Rick Bragg has quickly become one of my favorite authors. He writes in a way that is so easy to read, so enjoyable, and so familiar. Reading his writing brings so many of my own memories to mind. In telling his stories and the stories of his family, he is telling so many parts of my own story. While his history and mine are so different, they are also so similar. He makes the south come alive. He brings the south to life in a way that is romantic and realistic all rolled up into one. I wish I could tell stories the way Rick Bragg can tell stories. He is a master.

Bragg brings his grandfather, Charlie Bundrum, to life in vivid detail. Charlie is a southern man in every sense of the word. He is the ideal southern blue collar man that in his heart, every southern man wishes he could be, with all his virtues and vices. Charlie is no perfect man, but yet he is the perfect man in the way romantic southerners view manhood. Even with all his faults, he never fails his family and his friends. He passes on an everlasting legacy of goodness and virtue to his family. He stands firm in his beliefs and principles. He is rock solid and honest and full of integrity. He is unmovable, strong, proud yet humble.

In many ways, Charlie Bundrum reminds me of my own grandfather, my Papa. He is also quite different. He is strong and unwavering, stubborn and trustworthy. He is a man that can always be counted on and will never let you down. Unlike Bragg, I had the privilege of growing up with my Papa and knowing him personally. This book helped me to realize the blessing it was for me to grow up in the same small, southern town with my grandparents, to know them as friends, to spend time with them, to experience their wisdom. My grandfather was not a man of the "New South" as Bragg describes it today. He was a man who knew the hardship of the Great Depression, who overcame challenges in a hard and difficult Old South, and who did what it took to leave a lasting legacy for the generations coming after him. Papa was a man of faith who passed on an eternal legacy to his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Now it is my job to pass on his legacy to the generations to come. I am not the man my grandfather was, but I want to be a man he would be proud of. I want my son to be that kind of man. I want my grandsons to be men like him.

Thank you, Rick Bragg, for rekindling the memories of my own grandfather, and for helping me to better appreciate the relationship I was blessed to have with him. Thank you for helping me to better understand the legacy that has been passed along, just as Charlie Bundrum passed along a legacy in a greater way that he could probably have ever imagined.(less)

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Mar 18, 2011 Chrissie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bio, history, relationships, usa, text-checked, kirkus, kindle

NO SPOILERS!!!

On completion: I am sad to leave this book. It was a delight to read. I fell in love with Charlie, Ava's Man. the author's grandfather. Rick Bragg talked with all his relatives to find out about his grandfather. He was in fact born after his death. It wasn't easy finding out about Charlie because when he died everybody simply could no longer talk about him. It was too hurtful. You can look at this man and say he wasn't so great; he did so many things he shouldn't do. The fact is he...more

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May 21, 2012 Paula rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I loved this book!! Rick Bragg tells a beautiful story of the grandfather he never knew in Ava's Man, bringing both tears and out loud laughter while I was reading. Not only that, but I think my family got a little irritated and me constantly saying, "Listen! I need to read you this passage..."

The author brings his grandparents, Charlie and Ava Bundrum to life for all his readers. Ava was the young daughter of a prominent farmer who choose, against her families wishes, to marry Charlie; an unedu...more I loved this book!! Rick Bragg tells a beautiful story of the grandfather he never knew in Ava's Man, bringing both tears and out loud laughter while I was reading. Not only that, but I think my family got a little irritated and me constantly saying, "Listen! I need to read you this passage..."

The author brings his grandparents, Charlie and Ava Bundrum to life for all his readers. Ava was the young daughter of a prominent farmer who choose, against her families wishes, to marry Charlie; an uneducated, handsome young man with a sparkle in his eye. Charlie was a very tall, thin man with huge hands who could brawl with the best of them but also had endless patience for his babies. He was a carpenter and a moonshiner who, during the depression years, moved his family 21 times chasing work and being chased by the law.

This is an incredible story of an every day man living and raising a family in the poverty ridden deep south. There are so many passages I would like to quote for you here, but one, from the very beginning of the book that just touched my heart and sums up the story of Charlie Bundrum. Rick grew up surrounded by a family who never talked about Charlie, so when Rick started asking questions, he found out why he had never heard very much about his grandfather. Here is why-

'I remember the night, an icy night in December, I asked three of Charlie Bundrum's daughters to tell me about his funeral. I sat in embarrassment as my aunts, all in their sixties, just stared hard at the floor. Juanita, tough as whalebone and hell, began to softly cry, and Jo, who has survived Uncle John and ulcers, wiped at her eyes. My mother, Margaret, got up and left the room. For coffee, she said.
What kind of man was this, I wondered, who is so beloved, so missed, that the mere mention of his death would make them cry forty-two years after he was preached into the sky?'

This was a story I never wanted to end, and now that it has, I almost believe that I miss Charlie as much as his family does. Hand me a kleenex please...(less)

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Mar 05, 2012 Linda Lipko rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ava's man was Bragg's maternal grandfather who passed away before Rick was born into poverty.

Like William Faulkner, Bragg writes of the poor American South with such vivid descriptions that you feel as though you are walking along a hot, dusty path in a depression era back woods, spiting tobacco and drinking moon shine as your caloused hands and achy back trudge along yet one more soul depleting day.

Like Pat Conroy, Bragg captures the essence of an abusive father who simply won't let go of the...more

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Sep 07, 2011 Susanhayeshotmail.com rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Oh.my.word. How have I lived without this author? I cannot wait to get my hands on his other books because this is one heapin' helping of wonderful! Rick Bragg never knew his grandaddy, Charlie Bundrum, and also knew remarkably little about him as well. Bragg set about rectifying the situation by asking questions at the family reunion. Turns out the lack of information is not, as he feared, because Charlie was a scallywag, which he was to a certain degree, but because Charlie was so loved and re...more

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Jun 11, 2012 Jim rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, biography-memoir

An interesting entre into Depression-era life of poor whites living along the Georgia/Alabama border as explored through the remembrances and life of Ava and Charlie, and their forebears and offspring. Charlie never owned a house, worked mostly as a carpenter and roofer, loved to fish for food, was a good father and decent husband, and despite living through hard times they seemed to have a contented though difficult life, with small pleasures and loves. Most of all, he wasn't boring; he was lar...more

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Feb 15, 2011 Lori rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Rick Bragg is a pleasure to read. It was an honor to read his love letter to his grandfather.

A favorite excerpt:

"He thinks that if people really wanted to honor someone who was part of this place, about this place, someone who had courage and heart, then Charlie would do just fine.
The Creamery is gone. The theater is gone. And men like Charlie are gone. Why not, he figured, erect a statue to a man in a pair of overalls and a long-billed carpenter's cap, a hammer or a trotline in his hands and a...more

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Oct 30, 2011 Ryan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2011, books-i-would-own

The second installment of Bragg’s family history. This book chronicles the life of Bragg’s maternal grandfather, Charlie Bundrum, who passed away before Bragg’s birth. Bragg expresses great sorrow over the fact that he never knew this man, but does a great job of honestly portraying the man’s character – warts and all. Charlie (pronounced “Chollie” in the foothills vernacular) was a roofer by trade and a sometimes moon shiner for extra money. The family moved back and forth across the Alabama-Ge...more

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May 05, 2012 Andrea rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Andrea by: Lindsey

Shelves: bookclub, non-fiction

Southern culture is not usually that interesting to me, but I enjoyed this biography of a blue-collar family in Georgia around the time of the Great Depression. Sometimes it's easier to accept the differences in cultures that are extremely different from our own, but more challenging to accept cultures that are just a little bit different. I found myself thinking, "Yeah, I've felt kind of like that" when the author talks about how they loved playing with their kids, and "What in the world?!" whe...more

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Jul 27, 2011 Elaine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Some wise person once said "If you read, you live many lives. If you don't, you lead but one." I definitely lead another life in another place among people with a totally other culture: that of the rural South.

This is a family history of hardworking and hard drinking folk who hunted the woods for their supper and picked cotton to earn a few dollars. Owning and having weren't their goals. Family and babies were all.

Tough men cried with deep emotion, dandled babies tenderly. Bragg writes with the...more

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Mar 13, 2013 Jeremy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I liked this one a lot more than All Over But the Shoutin', primarily because Bragg himself is offstage for most of the book. Not that he's an interesting character, but I like getting to know him better through these people and their lives than through his own.

The book hits all the right emotional points--touching, funny, sad, frightening. Getting to know Bragg's grandfather right along with him is not only emotionally engaging, it's an amazing piece of journalism. Bragg's claims of how large...more

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Jun 09, 2009 Raymond rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have not read, "All Over But the Shoutin'," which is acclaimed by several sources as Rick Bragg's finest work. "Ava's Man," (which I do read) certainly is a literary achievement. Rick Bragg is a writer in the first rank. In, "Ava's Man," he devotes all his considerable effort to telling of the character and personality - to telling the story - of his mother's father, the grandfather he never knew. Charlie Bundrum, father of seven children, in the Great Depression in the white lightning/bootleg...more

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Nov 15, 2012 Stephanie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An incredible story. It's hard to understand why anyone would not give this book AT LEAST four stars. For me, it reminded me of my father and that side of my family. It makes me want to call them, go to them and hear stories that my father never shared. Bragg's way of honoring his grandfather, a man he never met, and really, honoring more than the man, but his family, the culture they were and are a part of, a season in time... it is very beautiful, written simply, lovingly, respectfully, unflin...more

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Jun 11, 2012 Jay McCue rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really enjoyed this book. I thought the characters were very compelling and interesting. I also appreciated the peek into life in the early 20th century, Depression-era, and beyond in the back hills of the South. Men like Charlie and women like Ava may not be seen very often today, but reading and learning about them and their actions (even if the motives behind their actions sometimes were born simply out of tradition) showed just how important family can be to a person, and indeed how import...more

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Apr 14, 2013 Chanel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was a really good book. Ava's Man who husband's name was Charlie Bundrum was a blue collar man full of pride, strength, determination and character. He worked hard to keep his family from poverty during the Depression by doing all types of odd jobs. This book takes place in a time when community really matter. They don't make men like Mr. Bundrum anymore.

It was extremely refreshing to revisit this hard but simpler time of life. His grandson (the author) Rick Bragg did a wonderful job givin...more

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About Rick Bragg

Rick Bragg is the Pulitzer Prize winning writer of best-selling and critically acclaimed books on the people of the foothills of the Appalachians, All Over but the Shoutin, Ava's Man, and The Prince of Frogtown.

Bragg, a native of Calhoun County, Alabama, calls these books the proudest examples of his writing life, what historians and critics have described as heart-breaking anthems of people usual...more

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Books by Rick Bragg

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Quotes from Ava's Man

“But if she was going to live in a damn jungle, she preferred it be a damn jungle in Georgia, she always said, and never saw any reason to elaborate on that.” — 9 people liked it

“It is easy to be liked when the world has no jagged edges, when life is electric blankets and peach ice cream. But to be beloved, a man needs a dragon.” — 6 people liked it

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Ava's Man

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