Memory Cards: Portraits from a Rural Journey (2015)
Memory Cards is a journey down a dusty rural road, but also back in time to where as late as the 1980s, neighbors still used mules for transportation and outhouses for other necessities. There is plenty to see, hear and smell, from the oppressive heat and pungent smell of row upon row of tobacco, to the mobile library that brought air conditioning and the aroma of paper, glue and binding each week of the summer. The author grew up in a functional family, but with different interests than his siblings, particularly ones that offered unknown prospects.
As the road from the farm widens, readers encounter firebrand preachers, snake-handling churches, guns, baseball, Baptists, Coca-Cola, Elvis, suicides, mysterious deaths, PTSD, houses inhabited by haints, pork barbecue, tea cookies, cornbread, fishing, arrowheads, ice hockey and basketball.
Memory Cards was published by Black Rose in 2015.
In October 2017, Memory Cards ranked on Amazon:
#1 in Nonfiction
#1 in Memoir
#1 on Kindle Top 100 Free for a week
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What the Wilson Times had to say about Memory Cards here
What the News & Observer (Raleigh) wrote about Memory Cards here
“Michael Brantley has the eyes of a camera and the soul of a poet. His memoir “Memory Cards” is a gentle and memory-jogging visit to a time and a place just down the road that is fading all too quickly. Along the way, he’ll make you smile, nod, try to swallow that lump in your throat and say more than once “Damn, I wish I’d written that.” Savor this book. Share it. It is that good.”
— Dennis Rogers, legendary NC newspaper columnist and author