A review by sarahfrog
The Prince of Frogtown by Rick Bragg

4.0

I think Rick Bragg is an evocative story teller, and I think his memoirs are strong, probably partially owing to him being a journalist. This third memoir is about his mostly absent father--who was written off as a mere footnote in his previous books. Bragg delves into his father's childhood and his growing up in a mill town in Appalachia and how this shaped his character, for better--and more often, worse. His father was a hard-drinking man, who fell further and further into the bottle, eventually succumbing to it completely. Bragg decided to write this memoir after he married and became a stepfather, to a boy he did not relate to. I thought the bits about 'the Boy' were a very honest accounting of what step-parenting feels like, on so many levels for so many people. It is rarely easy, and harder still for a man like Bragg who grew up with an essentially absent father--but the specter of whom hung over him throughout his childhood and far into adulthood.