With the Devil's Help

A True Story of Poverty, Mental Illness, and Murder

By: Neal Wooten

Narrated by: Traber Burns

2022 Audible’s Best in True Crime

In the tradition of The Glass Castle, Educated, and Heartland, Neal Wooten traces five decades of his dirt-poor, Alabama mountain family as the years and secrets coalesce.

Neal Wooten grew up in a tiny community atop Sand Mountain, Alabama, where everyone was white and everyone was poor. Prohibition was still embraced. If you wanted alcohol, you had to drive to Georgia or ask the bootlegger sitting next to you in church. Tent revivals, snake handlers, and sacred harp music were the norm, and everyone was welcome as long as you weren’t Black, brown, gay, atheist, Muslim, a damn Yankee, or a Tennessee Vol fan.

The Wooten’s lived a secret existence in a shack in the woods with no running water, no insulation, and almost no electricity. Even the school bus and mail carrier wouldn’t go there. Neal’s family could hide where they were, but not what they were. They were poor white trash. Cops could see it. Teachers could see it. Everyone could see it.

Growing up, Neal was weaned on folklore legends of his grandfather—his quick wit, quick feet, and quick temper. He discovers how this volatile disposition led to a murder, a conviction, and ultimately to a daring prison escape and a closely guarded family secret.

Being followed by a black car with men in black suits was as normal to Neal as using an outhouse, carrying drinking water from a stream, and doing homework by the light of a kerosene lamp. And Neal’s father, having inherited the very same traits of his father, made sure the frigid mountain winters weren’t the most brutal thing his family faced.

Told from two perspectives, this story alternates between Neal’s life and his grandfather’s, culminating in a shocking revelation. Take a journey to the Deep South and learn what it’s like to be born on the wrong side of the tracks, the wrong side of the law, and the wrong side of a violent mental illness.

©2022 Neal Wooten (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing

Great story

Being from the south, I could relate to the story. It took me back to my own childhood

Close to home

After watching an interview with Neal Wooten on PBS APT Bookmark I decided to read "With the Devils Help". This story of Mr Wooten's Grandfather Pete and other close family members from the point of view, primarily of Neal himself, presents a valid and graphic picture of life in the hills of rural north Alabama during a time when much of the rest of Alabama was moving into the modern era with fast cars, planes, and food. Pete was a highly intelligent and mentally fractured natural leader with frequent episodes of blazing, physically eruptive temper. His set of values (very good and very bad) included those possessed by both CEOs and hardened criminals and these values were passed down to his son and some even further out into the family tree. To say the family lived a life of difficulty would be, even in those times, a severe understatement. Electricity and even a roof were often non-existent not to mention the scarcity of basic nutrition. While I am quite sure this family was not unique in its poverty, their story is significant given the frequent unwarranted verbal and physical cruelty meted out by its husbands and fathers. Reading this account of life at the very edge of humanity provides a view that a vast majority of folks cannot imagine but who can gain insight into an unknown world that did exist relatively close by.

Wow, very good!

Loved this book for all the reasons the writer points out in his epilogue. I also came from a city dwelling similar family facing many of the same challenges and social stigmas, and I made my way free to success in my life. Luckily, the mental illness did not get genetically transferred to myself.
Congratulations Sir, you made it and are wiser and more empathetic than those who come from “perfect” homes…if they exist. 😊

Amazing Story

I loved this book. It was wonderfully read and is an amazing story and perfectly performed.

honesty

excellent book of survival without self pity. I really enjoyed the matter of fact style of writing without the author being emotionally dramatic.