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(More customer reviews)If the old game show, To Tell the Truth was still coming over the airwaves, we could have an interesting set of contestants using some of the books and novels that have been written in the past 100 years about farm life in Georgia. And, the secret is, Gone with the Wind would not be the winner - - in fact it would probably come in a distant third with Roller: A Dirt Road Sport leading the pack.
Julian Morgan, a fellow with first hand memories of the reality of growing up in the little town of Coleman, Georgia has penned a marvelous account of real life in the real age of innocence. Away from the influences of the "city" and long before the tainting of society by television and violence, Morgan sets forth an entertaining, realistic and straight-forward account of growing up in the dusty cotton and peanut fields of the rural south. With an old share-cropper as his mentor, guide, keeper and friend, young Roller is seen as he is maturing through the challenges of progress. With a keen eye for observation and an ever present wit that can be traced to his roots in the rural south, Roller goes about his life with the free spirit of an eagle.
The review on the dust jacket likens Roller to a modern day Huck Finn and this is a very apt description. Although quite honestly, Roller transcends the mirth of Huck Finn and confronts the realities of life and death, wealth and poverty and winds up as a character that every mother would want for a son and every father should be proud to claim as his own blood.
This is a great book and should be read by anyone who has even the slightest problem picturing Georgia as anything but what was put on the silver screen in Margaret Mitchell's classic legend. Roller is real - as real as the dirt between his toes and as real as the pain of shooting his own pet duck. It is a book with guts and a book with glory.
In fact, there really should be a new and separate genre of literature for books like this and those by other Georgia authors such as Ferrol Sams, Sonny Sammons, Amy Blackmarr and Jimmy Carter. I would call it Heritage literature- - the real side of life not some fictionalized and sugar-coated rendition of reality. While the names may have been changed, the stories are as real as they get. What these writers put on paper is honest, human, humane, and very rich with the blessings of growing up in the rural south and living in the rural south even after progress tried to ruin it.
Read it - you won't be sorry.
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