With the television blaring in the middle of the day at his farm in Alabama, Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author Rick Bragg had to get to a place where he could hear to talk on the phone.

"Mama puts the ghost of Jimmy Swaggart on the television," he said.

Bragg and his 88-year-old mom live on a farm in rural northeastern Alabama, with "two evil miniature donkeys and some terrible cats and some stray dogs that somehow figured out they can always get fed here," he explained.

The last few years have been tough ones. Three years ago, they lost Bragg's older brother Sam. In May, they lost his younger brother Mark.

"All of Mama's people are all gone — and so it's kind of me and her," he said. "She can't see real good, but she very much loves being alive and you know, she likes Swag

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