Ava’s Man, by Rick Bragg.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.
$25 — 304 pages.

Heartland, by David Wiltse.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001.
$24.95 — 320 pages.

Rick Bragg’s latest family memoir, Ava’s Man, is a fine book to begin your reading this year. Bragg, who wrote about his mother in All Over But The Shoutin’, turns his attention in this book to his mother’s father, Charlie Bundrum.

In recounting the story of a grandfather whom he never met, Bragg takes the reader back to the familiar territory of the Alabama-Georgia border. Charlie Bundrum was a man of many trades: roofer, carpenter, hunter and fisherman, an illiterate poor boy from that country who made his way through the world on his wits and his zest for life.

He was helped along the way by his wife, Ava, who grew up in a middle-class town family and who was married young to Charlie. Ava read Charlie the paper every morning; she bore and raised seven children (another died of dysentery, aged 11 months); she guarded her home and her family as fiercely as a lioness; and she loved her Charlie.

Bragg’s flair for writing and his deep affection for his family are the qualities that elevate this book above so many other biographies. Here in a passage on his grandfather is just one example of Bragg’s splendid prose style:

He was a man who did the things more civilized men dream they could, who beat one man half to death for throwing a live snake at his son, who shot a large woman with a .410 shotgun when she tried to cut him with a butcher knife, who beat the hell out of two worrisome Georgia highway patrolmen and threw them headfirst out the front door of a beer joint called the Maple on the Hill. He was a man who led deputies on long, hapless chases across high lonesome ridges and through briar-choked bogs, whose hands were so quick he snatched squirrels from trees, who hunted without regard to seasons or quotas, because how could a game warden in Montgomery or Atlanta know if his babies were hungry?

Besides being a family chronicle, Bragg’s book also offers a window onto the Depression and the country folks who lived through it. Like millions of other rural Americans at the time, Charlie Bundrum found himself scrabbling for a living. He moved his family 21 times during the Depression, looking for work, keeping hunger at bay for his wife and children, yet always maintaining his spirit in the face of a grinding poverty that doubtless crushed many other good men.

Near the end of this fine book, Bragg imagines his grandfather poling his boat on the river:

I try, sometimes, to picture myself there with him, but as a boy of six or so again, not as a man. Because I don’t know what he would think of me, grown.

But a boy, now.

A boy.

I bet he would give me some candy, and sing me a song.

Rick Bragg has given us a song about his grandfather, and it’s as sweet as a mockingbird singing in the morning.

•••

David Wiltse’s Heartland is a well-made tale of murder, redemption, and small-town life in Nebraska.

Billy Tree, a Secret Service agent who has lost his nerve, left government service, and gone to live with his sister in Falls City, Neb., quickly finds himself embroiled in the scandals and crimes of his hometown. He falls in love with an old friend, makes enemies of two other former acquaintances from his childhood, and discovers that some big-time drug money is making its way into Falls City.

What adds drama to Billy’s story is his past failure as an agent when his partner was killed while investigating a threat against the president. Convinced that he is responsible for his partner’s death and that he is also a coward, Billy works to overcome his own fears while defending his friends and battling his enemies.

What makes Heartland sparkle as a suspense novel is Wiltse’s creation of Billy Tree. Billy often makes a literal mess of things — falling into mud, crawling through filth, getting his sister’s car shot up. Throughout his trials, however, Billy keeps his sense of humor, often cracking jokes in an Irish accent that sometimes puzzles those around him — his accent is not that polished — but should prove amusing to the reader.

Heartland also takes the reader on a sort of tour of small-town America, depicting both its pleasures and its pains. Wiltse does a fine job of giving us a feel for the closeness of such towns on the Great Plains  the openness, the sense that little can be hidden from the neighbors, the feeling of protection and the lack of privacy. Pat Kunkel, the sheriff, knows the home and face of nearly every person in town. Because of her beauty and inviting ways, Joan Blanchard has built a reputation for free and easy ways that haunts her throughout the book. These and other characters are locked into the roles that they have built for themselves in the town.

If you’re looking for some well-written suspense to help pass the winter days, you might give Heartland a look.

(Jeff Minick lives in Waynesville. Readers can contact him at info@smokymountainnews.com)