A Long Way from Whitehall

Author David L. Lyons grew up during the 1950s and 60s in the small community of Whitehall in northern Alabama. As a child, he dealt with abject poverty and the stigma of being born to an unwed mother, which greatly affected his childhood. Lyons realized he was different from other children on the first day of school, when teachers asked students to tell the class who their fathers were and what they did. He never knew his father. Instead, he was raised by a single mother—a rarity in 1947, ...