Our Dec. Front Porch Book Club Selection is Rick Bragg's "Where I Come From"
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Pull up a seat as we dive in to one book each month with the Country Living Front Porch Book Club, capping each month with a chat with the authors themselves. Our December selection is best-selling author Rick Bragg's "Where I Come From"!
It opens with a tale of a fisherman, or at least, that's what Rick Bragg would like to call himself. But with a bit of chagrin and a dash of his trademark humor and honesty, he admits that he should not be one to brag. Though fishing is for his family a tried-and-true legacy, for Rick it's, well, something of a challenge. He's a fisherman, "more or less," and by the end of the opening short story of Where I Come From, you're sure to be settled in and ready for more.
There is a nostalgia to best-selling author Rick Bragg's writing that we never tire of. It's tucked in the pages among his natural humor, saturated with a real love of the Deep South where he was born and raised. His descriptions are never overwrought and always spot-on ("parboiled" tourists and a guide donning "a woeful, wilting top hat" conjure the perfect mental image with just a handful of words in "The Mean Season"). The way he describes his grandmother, Ava Bundrum, in "The Heat Monster"—"she would motion me close, as if the clinging air were listening"—made me envision my own grandparents pulling me nearer for a story or strip of wisdom about to be handed down.
The tales in Where I Come From may be familiar to readers of Southern Living or Garden & Gun, the two magazines where they originated. Their short lengths make for perfect holiday reading, when we're often bone-tired after a long day of simultaneously working, rounding up overly excited kiddos, stumbling over the dog, prepping for a very different-looking holiday celebration during a pandemic, and just generally surviving the year 2020.
Whether he's explaining his fondness for the city of Atlanta ("what a great city this will be when they finally invent the flying car"), bemoaning the fire ant in "Dear Grumpy Gardener," or speaking to the importance of the late author Harper Lee, these are stories for anyone who has loved a place, time, or person and wanted the words with which to speak about it. They're stories to decompress and come home to, sink into your favorite chair, and flip open a new chapter night after night, letting the warm cadence and comforting nostalgia of Rick's writing bring the day, and year, to a gentler close.
COUNTRY LIVING FRONT PORCH BOOK CLUB FOR DECEMBER 2020
Selection: Where I Come From by Rick Bragg (available via local bookstores, Amazon, or Bookshop)
Start reading with us December 1.
Tune in to the Country Living's Instagram Stories as Rick answers your questions about Where I Come From on December 30.
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