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With the Devil's Help: A True Story of Poverty, Mental Illness, and Murder Audiobook
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In the tradition of The Glass Castle, Educated, and Heartland, Neal Wooten traces five decades of his dirt-poor, Alabama mountain family as the years and secrets coalesce.
Neal Wooten grew up in a tiny community atop Sand Mountain, Alabama, where everyone was white and everyone was poor. Prohibition was still embraced. If you wanted alcohol, you had to drive to Georgia or ask the bootlegger sitting next to you in church. Tent revivals, snake handlers, and sacred harp music were the norm, and everyone was welcome as long as you weren’t Black, brown, gay, atheist, Muslim, a damn Yankee, or a Tennessee Vol fan.
The Wooten’s lived a secret existence in a shack in the woods with no running water, no insulation, and almost no electricity. Even the school bus and mail carrier wouldn’t go there. Neal’s family could hide where they were but not what they were. They were poor white trash. Cops could see it. Teachers could see it. Everyone could see it.
Growing up, Neal was weaned on folklore legends of his grandfather—his quick wit, quick feet, and quick temper. He discovers how this volatile disposition led to a murder, a conviction, and ultimately to a daring prison escape and a closely guarded family secret.
Being followed by a black car with men in black suits was as normal to Neal as using an outhouse, carrying drinking water from a stream, and doing homework by the light of a kerosene lamp. And Neal’s father, having inherited the very same traits of his father, made sure the frigid mountain winters weren’t the most brutal thing his family faced.
Told from two perspectives, this story alternates between Neal’s life and his grandfather’s, culminating in a shocking revelation. Take a journey to the Deep South and learn what it’s like to be born on the wrong side of the tracks, the wrong side of the law, and the wrong side of a violent mental illness.
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“With the Devil’s Help is a survival story in the mode of Harry Crews’ brilliant memoir A Childhood. Crews concluded that for a ‘grit,’ a redneck like him, survival was triumph enough. Wooten concurs.”
— Tuscaloosa News
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“Wooten turns in an earnest, sometimes sorrowful account of his upbringing in the poorest part of northeast Alabama…A Drive-By Truckers album of a book, sometimes appalling, always heartfelt and vividly observed.”
— Kirkus Reviews -
“A powerful story told by an excellent writer that paints a true picture of the Deep South…This book will draw you in and hold on to you.”
— Jerry Ellis, author of Walking the Trail -
“The author took a brutal childhood and somehow turned it into a story filled with heart. The way he intertwined the two story lines was masterful.”
— William Dameron, author of The Lie
Awards
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One of Audible’s Best Audiobooks of the Year
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About Traber Burns
Traber Burns worked for thirty-five years in regional theater, including the New York, Oregon, and Alabama Shakespeare festivals. He also spent five years in Los Angeles appearing in many television productions and commercials, including Lost, Close to Home, Without a Trace, Boston Legal, Grey’s Anatomy, Cold Case, Gilmore Girls, and others.