Featured books

Featured Websites

.: Reader Views Kids

Provides book reviews, by kids, for kids

.: Inside Scoop Live

Provides live author interviews for podcast

.: Authors Access

Provides interviews with experts in the publishing industry

.: Midwest Book Review

Provides post-publication reviews

.: Reader Views

Provides book reviews and author publicity

.: LR Communication Design

Provides professional website design and development

.: Blogging Authors

Provides a place where writers and readers meet

.: Review The Book

Provides 5 books reviews on 10 different sites

.: Best Sellers World

Provides book reviews and author features

.: Feathered Quill Book Reviews

Provides book reviews and author features

reviews

Southern Boy: Growing Up On the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the 1920s-30s

Armiger Jagoe
iUniverse (2009)
ISBN 9781440144547
Reviewed by Marcy Blesy for Rebecca’s Reads (02/10)


“Southern Boy” by Armiger Jagoe is an autobiography of a Southern boy growing up on the gulf coast of Mississippi in the 1920’s and 1930’s.  Raised on the Mississippi coast until after high school graduation, Mr.. Jagoe recalls in detail the events and people he encountered growing up.  When his father must leave to find work in Washington during the Great Depression, young Armiger must assume the “man of the house” role. 

The events Mr. Jagoe describes can mostly be characterized as “normal” or “common.”  Though nothing too traumatic happens to Mr. Jagoe, the reader comes to love his life, too, and appreciate the people he meets on his journey to adulthood.  “Southern Boy” invokes memories of the Andy Griffith Show in my mind.   People watch out for each other.  Neighbors cross freely into each other’s yards.  People gather on the great big front porch.  Racial tensions were hinted at, but to Armiger, he saw the commonalities rather than the differences between races. 

Mr. Jagoe has a nice, flowing style of writing.  Though the chapters are often filled with different life anecdotes, they seem to belong together in his groupings.  I definitely get an understanding of his love for his upbringing in the South.  Could he have had the same fond memories growing up elsewhere in the U.S.?  Perhaps, but to Mr. Jagoe his early life will always be entwined with living on the Mississippi coast. 

I am left wanting more, as I have come to enjoy the man, not just the location of his early life story.  I hope that the rest of his life serves him with many more happy memories.