Rick Bragg's All Over but the Shoutin' is a haunting memoir about growing up dirt-poor in the deep South, and about struggling to leave the past behind while still deeply tied to it through bonds of love and responsibility.

Rick Bragg was born in the pinewoods of Alabama to a mean-tempered, hard-drinking father and a strong-willed, loving mother, who struggled to protect her sons from the effects of poverty and ignorance that had constricted her own life. After years of abusing his wife and children, Charles Bragg abandoned the family when Rick was six. Margaret Bragg moved her three sons into her parents' house, going eighteen years without a new dress so that her children could have school clothes and working in the cotton fields so that they wouldn't have to live on welfare alone. Brash and wild like his father, Rick graduated from high school, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary. Instead, he signed up for a journalism class at a nearby college and before long was offered a job as a sportswriter for the local paper. From there, he moved from small papers in northeast Alabama to The St. Petersburg Times and eventually became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times.

All Over but the Shoutin' is the moving account of one man's determination to rewrite his family history and to carve out a life for himself based on the strength of his mother's encouragement and belief. Written with refreshing honesty and marvelous humor, it paints an unforgettable picture of the love and suffering that lie at the heart of every family.