As the summer of 1961 approaches, the small, segregated town of Hammond, Alabama, is plagued by racial violence, and two old friends--one black, one white--must stand together. Reprint.

A Walk Through Fire

Cobb, William

Avon/Books

To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic

Arts & Photography

Music

NYU Press

In this audacious memoir, William Cobb reveals the tumultuous creative life of a distinguished practitioner of southern and Alabama storytelling. As poignant and inspiring as his own fiction, Captain Billy’s Troopers traces Cobb’s early life, education, and struggles with alcohol and the debilitating condition normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH). Like a curving river, the broad sweep of Cobb’s turbulent life includes both startling cataracts and desultory eddies, leading sometimes into shadows or opening into unexpected sunlight. With unsentimental clarity, Cobb recounts coming of age in his native Demopolis in the churning middle years of the twentieth century. It’s there he has his first tantalizing tastes of alcohol and begins to drink habitually. Readers then travel with Cobb to Livingston University (now the University of West Alabama) and then on to Vanderbilt University. Along the way, readers relish his first experiences of love and success as a writer, leading to a career as a professor of writing at Alabama College (now the University of Montevallo) in 1963. From there Cobb’s struggles with alcohol and depression lead to elongated years of tumbling creative output and the collapse of his marriage. The summer of 1984 found Cobb in rehab, the first step in his path to recovery. His unflinching memoir narrates both the milestones and telling details of his intense therapy and years in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). In the sober thirty years since, Cobb has published a string of critically praised novels and a prize-winning collection of short stories. The capstone of his comeback was winning the Harper Lee Award in 2007 for distinguished fiction writing. In 2000, shortly after retiring, Cobb developed NPH, which upset his sense of balance and triggered dementia symptoms and other maladies. Nine years later in 2009, brain surgery brought Cobb a dramatic recovery, which began the third act in his writing career. Vital, honest, and entertaining, Captain Billy’s Troopers captures the life of an Alabama original.

Captain Billy's Troopers: A Writer's Life

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

University Alabama Press

Humor, Adventures in Nashville, TN Opryland

Coming of Age at the Y: Delores Lovelady's Hilarious Adventures in Nashville's Opryland

Literature & Fiction

Portals Pr

Fiction. Set in the deep south near the end of WWII, this novel could be interpreted as a coming of age novel not only for its young characters Billy and Hallie, but for a whole region facing post-war Civil Rights demands and the worries and stress of a post-nuclear, post-Holocaust society. Accordingly, Cobb's moods in this novel alternate between sweet innocence as we watch Hallie and Billy con the local junk dealer, to mythic tragedy as we listen to Joe, a colored man who has self-exiled across the river from a racist Southern town, reminisce over his past life and philosophize over his and everyone's present life.

The Hermit King

Contemporary

Portriga Pubns

The Meaning of Christian Unity

History

BiblioLife

A Spring of Souls

This fictional trip to Piper, Alabama is also a journey into the realms of magic and mystery, love and hate, and spilled blood and reconciliation.

United States

Crane Hill Pub

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Books by Cobb, William