With the Devil’s Help: A True Story of Poverty, Mental Illness, and Murder
By Neal Wooten
Pegasus, 2022
Hardcover: $26.95
Genre: Memoir
Reviewed by Cheryl Carpenter
Sand Mountain, at the southern end of the inscrutable Appalachian region, is commonly associated with shape-note singers, snake handlers, and unrelenting poverty. Those who have made a home in the towns and coves of those mountains have had limited employment opportunities: coal mining, subsistence farming, working in textile mills. They are some of the ones Wayne Flynt refers to as “Dixie’s forgotten people,” but they are remembered in best-selling books by Rick Bragg (Ava’s Man), Barbara Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead), J.D. Vance (Hillbilly Elegy), and others. Neal Wooten, a native of Sand Mountain, adds his memoir, With the Devil’s Help, to the list.
Although his parents are an integral part of the story, Wooten hopscotches over them to alternate chapters between his childhood self and his grandfather’s odyssey, creating a shaky balance between innocence and malevolence. Pete Wooten, Neal’s paternal grandfather – spirited, strong, volatile, intelligent, irresponsible – is a tragic hero, inspiring fear even in his own family. With no formal education and no guidance, he set his goal to own a piece of land and took his young wife to the tobacco fields of North Carolina to earn the money to make that happen. After spending nearly all they had earned, he came home broke and moved back into his parents’ house where he took out his frustrations on those who loved him. This became a pattern of behavior with violence increasing at every wasted effort and disappointment. Pete and Elsie had one child after another, straining the family’s already meager resources and causing more tension. The last time he beat his wife, she left him. The children, who had banded together for protection and comfort in the face of their father’s rages, began to move out and marry. For at least one of them, Travis, Neal’s father, the cycle started all over again.
Pete had grown older, too, and when he met and married Etta, he seemed to settle down for a while, but a squabble within the family escalated over the course of the farming season. At harvest time the explosion came. Pete’s temper flared, and he killed a man. A jury found him guilty, and the judge sentenced him to ten years in prison. Neal’s two older sisters were toddlers when Pete started serving his time at Kilby Prison. Neal had not yet been born and didn’t learn about his grandfather until the old man died, but the tragedy affected him and all the family for many years.
In the epilogue, Wooten states that he believes “it is the adversity that defines us, that needs telling no matter what someone accomplishes after…Just surviving and getting out is the ultimate triumph.” Neal Wooten did get out, earned a degree in applied mathematics from Auburn University, has had remarkable success in various careers, and has returned to Sand Mountain. These days he no doubt has the luxuries of indoor plumbing, electricity, and television, but why did he come back to a place where he suffered such deprivation and abuse? Was it a matter of “the devil you know”? Maybe when he left, he carried something of his native place and culture that called to him afar? Wooten states simply, “Over the centuries, poor people in the Deep South had learned that there was only one constant in life, one reliable source of support…Family.” He still has family here. Whatever other reasons he may have for coming back, Alabama readers welcome him home.
A native of Mississippi, Cheryl Carpenter has lived in Decatur, Alabama since 1987. She is a retired English teacher.
