AVA'S MAN

Everybody's heard of John Henry, Paul Bunyan, and Pecos Bill, but nobody's ever heard of Charlie Bundrum. He's not what you'd call a legend: a man who lived his Depression-era hardscrabble life on the Georgia-Alabama border so intensely and so fully that it became the stuff of poetry in the hands of his grandson, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Bragg. It's a rough story about rough people and their rough lives. But like Bundrum's bootleg liquor, it goes down sweetly. Bragg is just brimming with stories about his grand-father, and they're all filled with affection for the man. Tom Stechschulte catches the rhythms, the tones, and the people of this West Georgia hill country with a naturalness that steers clear of caricature. His voice has an angularity that rings just a touch differently with every speaker, giving us, not just a tribute to Bragg's grandfather, but the voices and sounds of a world--its model As and mules and whiskey stills--that would otherwise disappear from our memories. P.E.F. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 02]