If you’re not familiar with the Southern Literary Trail, it
highlights and features events surrounding the places in Alabama, Georgia, and
Mississippi that brought us some of our greatest American writers. Some of the Alabama writers featured are:
William Bradford Huie, Harper Lee, Truman Capote, Ralph Ellison and F. Scott
Fitzgerald (to name a few)!
Every two years, the Trail organizers put together Trailfest
– a literary festival with free events, tours and performances across 3 states
– and this year’s Trailfest wends its way up to Decatur! North Alabama’s events
spring from the writings of William Bradford Huie and Joe David Brown.
Joe David Brown’s 1971 novel Addie Pray follows a young orphan girl and a con-man in the 1930s,
whose journey starts in Demopolis, travels up Highway 31, and ends in Hartselle
and Decatur (they travel elsewhere, but Alabama is most interesting to
us!). Addie Pray was the basis of the film Paper Moon (1973) and the novel was re-released in 2002 under the
title Paper Moon.
Decatur Public Library has the original 1971 version in our
Alabama Room. Since this copy is not
available for checkout, the Friends of Decatur Public Library graciously
purchased us six copies of the new edition and a second copy of the DVD based
on the book. The copies you can check
out are located at the end of the Biography section. If there are no copies there when you come
in, you can reserve one so that it will be held for you upon its return. We’ve also put a few copies of the Southern
Literary Trail brochure out there. The
Library makes the book available to you, but there are other events happening in
Decatur and Hartselle. You can visit www.southernliterarytrail.org or www.decatur.lib.al.us
(lists Decatur events only).
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2002 cover. We have
six copies of this book for checkout.
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Original 1971 cover from our Alabama Room copy.
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