Rick Bragg's final book in the trilogy of his family life that began with All Over But the Shoutin' demonstrates perfectly the quandry faced by those of us who love audiobooks.

Bragg narrates The Prince of Frogtown, the story of the drunken, abusive, abandoning father that is only a malevolent ghost in his first two books. It is amazing and wonderful to hear this Southern tale told in his Southern drawl. You begin to feel as if you are sitting on the steps of a rough-hewn cabin in the Alabama woods while he spins his tale from the rocking chair on the porch.

But it is Bragg's way with language that is his gift - he never went to college but he earned a Neiman Fellowship at Harvard and a Pulitzer Prize. And listening to this book does not allow you to savor slowly his tremendous ability to describe things and people and a way of life - working in the cotton mills of Alabama - long gone. He rumbles on in his thick Southern baratone and there is no chance to read a section over again and draw out the pleasure.