The Prince of Frogtown
Published by Penguin Random House Audio
5/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
In this final volume of the beloved American saga that began with All Over but the Shoutin' and continued with Ava's Man, Rick Bragg closes his circle of family stories with an unforgettable tale about fathers and sons inspired by his own relationship with his ten-year-old stepson.
He learns, right from the start, that a man who chases a woman with a child is like a dog who chases a car and wins. He discovers that he is unsuited to fatherhood, unsuited to fathering this boy in particular, a boy who does not know how to throw a punch and doesn't need to; a boy accustomed to love and affection rather than violence and neglect; in short, a boy wholly unlike the child Rick once was, and who longs for a relationship with Rick that Rick hasn't the first inkling of how to embark on. With the weight of this new boy tugging at his clothes, Rick sets out to understand his father, his son, and himself.
The Prince of Frogtown documents a mesmerizing journey back in time to the lush Alabama landscape of Rick's youth, to Jacksonville's one-hundred-year-old mill, the town's blight and salvation; and to a troubled, charismatic hustler coming of age in its shadow, Rick's father, a man bound to bring harm even to those he truly loves. And the book documents the unexpected corollary to it, the marvelous journey of Rick's later life: a journey into fatherhood, and toward a child for whom he comes to feel a devotion that staggers him. With candor, insight, tremendous humor, and the remarkable gift for descriptive storytelling on which he made his name, Rick Bragg delivers a brilliant and moving rumination on the lives of boys and men, a poignant reflection on what it means to be a father and a son.
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Reviews for The Prince of Frogtown
8 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Few can write like this Pulitzer Prize winner! He is the example to use for anyone who teaches English or Writing. He can break your heart in one sentence and cause an out loud chuckle in the next.He can tear your heart out and then make you smile at the sheer power of his marvelous mastery of words, eliciting feelings that at the hands of a lessor writer could not convey the subtle awe inspiring depth of emotion.How I wish I could write like him. His style seems as natural as Rembrandt crafting a chiaroscuro masterpiece, never using a white canvas, always gray or brown in backdrop, never just bright, never only dark, and the result is a portrait rich in depth and beauty.As Bragg takes pen to paper there is a ray of hope amid the chaotic backdrop of an abusive, weak, self destructive, alcoholic father contrasted to a strong, able, loving steady mother.Like Rembrandt's painting Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, amidst the pounding waves, there is life threatening turmoil and also calming force on board the ship, tempest torn praying for a safe passage.In his first novels, All Over But the Shoutin' and Ava's Man Bragg took us on the rough journey of his childhood with an alcoholic father who harmed. Forgiveness of a man who caused so very much pain is difficult and it is only in the cathartic courage of Bragg to write about the angst that the reader understands the struggle of father and son.In The Prince of Frogtown, Bragg is now a step father to a ten year old son. He inherits a small boy so unlike him and the childhood hardships he endured. This is a pampered younger child who never knew the flash of a father's anger fueled by white lightening bootlegged whiskey.As Bragg struggles with the definition of fatherhood, he like many people from dysfunctional families know only what NOT to do and wrestle with what to do. When a parent of poverty has influence on a child of middle class softness, does the parent make the child buckle up and be a man, or does he accept the distinct dichotomy?Bragg's raw emotion is written with boxing gloves lined with soft rabbit fur.This is writing at its best, and like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird it is southern gothic in the powerful form of a work loaded in distinctive phrases and individual components that complete a unifying canvas of incredible power.FIVE STARS.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rick Bragg is a wonderful storyteller and his own personal story is so interesting. I have read "All Over But the Shoutin'" and "Ava's Man". This one, "The Prince of Frogtown" is about his father whom you really came to dislike in the first two books. The author does a masterful job of bringing some sympathy to his father without letting him off the hook for deserting his family and living so selfishly. He interweaves that story with the author's own journey into fatherhood which is so heartwarming and true. I listened to this one and Rick Bragg reads it himself: absolutely mesmerizing.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One of Rick Bragg's best writings.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Here master storyteller, Rick Bragg, tells his story about trying to come to terms with a father he barely knew and for most of his (Rick's) life, didn't want to know. It's also his story about getting to know a 10 year old boy who had just become his son, a boy who was vastly different from the child Rick had been.This is a wonderful ending to his trilogy that began with [All Over but the Shouting], the story of his mother and contnued with [Ava'a Man], the story of his maternal grandmother. All three tell of how hard a life it was for these people back in the mid 20th century. The Braggs weren't rich and influential, in fact many saw the wrong side of a jail. But many worked hard at a hard job, some in the mills of Jacksonville, Alabama, where maiming and death were a common occurance.In [Prince...], Rick finds a different side of a man that he always saw as a drunk and a no-good who was frequently being bailed out of jail with money that should have fed Rick and his two brothers.He finds a man who wanted to be what he should have been but ended up losing the battle to do so. And in himself, Rick finds that he can be that good man to a boy he just became a parent to and being a parent was not something Rick ever aspired to.