FAIRHOPE, Ala. — As Father’s Day approaches, many of us remember with joy the experiences we had growing up with our dad — perhaps not a perfect existence, but providing an upbringing that gave us character and guidance in life.

Others, however, were raised in broken homes, with a mother who had to fill both parental roles, often making tremendous sacrifices to keep the family together.

“I didn’t know anything about him then that was good,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Rick Bragg, whose new book The Prince of Frogtown chronicles his search for the whole truth about his own, mostly absent father. “What little there was were glimmers and glimpses.”

The Alabama native didn’t write fondly of the late Charles Bragg in All Over but the Shoutin', the book that was the first in a family narrative, followed by Ava’s Man, and this last installment in the trilogy.

The elder Bragg was then described as a disconnected alcoholic, whose wife and three sons had to learn how to make it on their own when the author was only 6 years old and attending first grade. He last spoke with his father while in high school.

In his latest effort, Bragg explained, “I summed him up as a tragic figure, a one-dimensional villain whose fists and tongue lashed my mother when he was drunk, who drove us away for months and years only to reclaim us when we again crossed his mind … It was hypocritical for me to condemn such a careless man, after my own careless, selfish life, but I did it. I sawed my family tree off at the fork, and made myself a man with half a history.”

Bragg said during a phone conversation from Atlanta last week that he has “interviewed a lot of guys in prison, and they were there for their worst moment on Earth — pulling a knife or throwing back a hammer on a gun, and that’s not all they are. We were our dad’s worst moment.”

He set out to learn the entire story by interviewing 50 or so individuals, and he found five or six folks who not only knew his father, but also had pleasant stories to tell.

“What I wanted to do was find someone to say something good about my dad,” Bragg said. “I wasn’t trying to commit objective journalism here. It only took a few years, but I finally found them.”

The process was also a way of finding himself, and in turn squeezing into his new role as a parent.

Bragg saw no need to update the earlier story until four years ago, when fate and his love of a slender, redheaded woman (Dianne) with a young son (Jake) suddenly made him a father by default.

He said, “I started thinking about my dad over and over. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world that now would be the time to do it.”

In his new book, Bragg wrote he learned the hard way that “a man who chases a woman with a child is like a dog who chases a car and wins.” He also found out he was totally unsuited to be the father of a boy accustomed to love and affection, rather than violence and neglect.

Bragg acknowledged he was not at all ready to deal with the then 10-year-old boy, whom he didn’t consider tough enough because he didn’t know how to fight, was spoiled and overprotected by his mother, carried a “blanky” and was nothing like the lad Bragg was so many years ago while growing up in the foothills of the Appalachians.

“(Jake) was a city boy, probably very much like the boys down there — a good boy,” according to Bragg. “He liked to go to church. He was just very different than the way I remembered myself growing up. My generation was a lot different, rock-throwing and good Biblical cussing. He was just a different kind of kid.”

In The Prince of Frogtown he wrote, “… the idea of a boy is one thing, while the reality is you spend your last spry years at the Sonic, stabbing at a big red button, then watching him baste the interior of your truck in root beer and barbecue sauce as he squeals, whines, pouts and punches every button on the radio, till all you can get is static and satanic howls … But I would tolerate the little boy, for the woman.”

Bragg said he referred to Jake throughout the book only as “the boy” and his wife, Dianne, as “the woman” so “there wouldn’t be one word in there that would hurt their feelings or they didn’t agree with.” Most of the book took shape after the wedding, he pointed out.

“All the things I worried about were because I had a little boy. Now he’s a man. He’s strong and has a good heart, and at 14, he’s more grown up than I am. I’m not sure tough and crazy didn’t get confused in my head. Bouncing a rock off your head is not a good attribute to have. But, you need to know how to throw a punch, even in a gentle world.”

Having Jake in his life ultimately forced Bragg to become a dad. The boy adored the somewhat scruffy author early on in their relationship and, in Bragg’s own words, the boy’s questionable table manners transformed the writer into “an etiquette-quoting popinjay.”

Bragg said, “I learned a little bit more about what I was doing. I was always good about realizing my shortcomings, but not doing anything about them. I’m not sure if a person ever learns as much from their experiences as they would like to think they do.”

Now, he said, “When the boy (who is quickly becoming a talented guitarist) walks in the room and says ‘let me play you something,’ I am never going to say ‘I’m not interested in it right now.’ Most of the time I say, ‘pick it son.’” Bragg now fears the boy is growing up much faster than his proud stepfather would like.

The Prince of Frogtown guides readers through Bragg’s own childhood living near Jacksonville, Ala.’s 100-year-old textile mill, known as both the town’s blight and salvation; and also explores Charles, the troubled, charismatic hustler coming of age in its shadow. Among the few possessions the man left behind when he died were an empty wallet, a clip-on tie and a pair of yellowed, mismatched dice.

“I think the alcohol was the biggest thing,” Bragg said. “Even when he was sober, he was a mean motor scooter. He’d fight anyone. Why not fight? Why not gamble your money away? All his governors had slipped off the chain.”

Bragg’s younger brother, Mark, was 3 when his mother took the kids and left Charles for the last time. His older brother, Sam, was 9.

“If I hadn’t been so little, I might have seen more of it, and when you’re little, you see what’s important to you,” Bragg said. “(Sam) had no good memories. His feelings about Daddy were so much stronger than mine because he had more information.” Mark remembers nothing about his father.

Charles once gave Sam a wagon, while Rick received a red tricycle that the elder Bragg ran over in the driveway. Their father also brought home a dog that immediately connected with Sam, but Charles later entered it in a dogfight, and brought it home in a box, mangled beyond recognition and barely alive.

Bragg learned his father was not all bad though, and the book is indeed not Daddy Dearest. He said he didn’t try to “whitewash” his father’s reputation, but rather relate how he was as a boy and a strikingly handsome young man before life’s realities and the bottle changed him.

He wrote, “He led Shirley (his cousin) across days of danger. Her heart wasn’t in it, but she went because she loved being with him, and wondered how anyone so small could be so unafraid. He was not wild-eyed and crazy-acting, but serious-faced and confident, till he got to the top of a tree or the bottom of a hill. Then, she believes, he was in pure joy. As he said then, ‘Doin’ somethin’ was always better’n talkin’ ‘bout doin’ somethin’.’”

Bragg said his mother is pleased with the outcome.

“She’s fine with it now. She told me she thought it was a fine book,” he said. “She said she was afraid I would find more sadness. Everybody’s got to lay this (kind of thing) to rest one way or another.”

Would the book make an ideal Father’s Day gift? Bragg laughed and said, “I don’t think there’s a whole bunch of Brady Bunch daddies out there. Many of them walk around a little confused. At least I’m not alone in that.”

Bragg’s other books include Somebody Told Me and I Am a Soldier, Too. He and his family currently reside in Tuscaloosa, where he teaches writing at the University of Alabama. He also owns a home in Fairhope.

He said he plans to complete the book about the Jacksonville mill and its workers that he had already begun when he was named the first writer-in-residence at the Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts. He will also soon write a novel for Knoph, perhaps a mystery, and most likely about people living in the deep South.

Page & Palette Bookstore will host Bragg at a speaking and signing event on Wednesday, June 11, at the Blue Gill Restaurant on the Causeway in Spanish Fort.

The doors will open at 6 p.m. with the reading starting at 7, and book-signing immediately following his presentation. Bragg will exclusively sign all books purchased from Page & Palette.

Live music will also be featured throughout the evening. There is no charge for admission, but food and drinks will be available for purchase.

“I hope people like the book,” Bragg said. “I hope they see something good in it, and don’t mind spending some time turning its pages.”

Bragg said he will travel to Baldwin County again with his family next month to go to the beach, walk on the Fairhope Pier, do some saltwater fishing, kill snakes and go to war against poison oak in his yard.

“It’s a life with a softer edge,” he said. “It’s like being on another planet.”

For more information about the event, call Page & Palette at (251) 928-5295, or visit www.pageandpalette.com.