Phyllis Hain’s memoir, Diamond in the Dark, returns to one of Mobile’s most sensational cases of the early 1980s and traces how a childhood of violence shaped the choices of a lifetime.
Tag: memoir
Bayou La Batre
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Mon Louis Island and a Servant’s Reward: The French Roots of a Mobile Family
The second installment of a Mobile family memoir traces a French line back to Bienville’s settlers, to land between Bayou La Batre and Coden, and to how Mon Louis Island got its name.
Local News
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The Boy Who Rowed Out to Farragut’s Fleet: A Mobile Family’s Memoir Begins
A memoir by Sister Marie Emilie, a Mobile-born nun, opens with an Irish immigrant on the docks, a wounded Confederate prisoner, and a boy summoned home by Admiral Farragut himself.
Citronelle
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A Mother’s Notes to a Son: An Election, a Wedding, and a Mobile Household in 2004
A collection of e-mails from a Mobile mother to her grown son captures the 2004 election season as it was lived in one Alabama household: gloom, gallows humor, wedding logistics and a great deal of wine.
Mobile
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Lessons From a Hospital Bed: How a Mobile Stockbroker Learned to Stop Chasing the Last Dollar
The concluding installment of a Mobile memoir: a foul-mouthed doctor diagnoses a pulmonary embolism, a broker survives, and a man decides that a million-dollar year is not what he will be remembered for.
Mobile
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Six Broadcasts a Day: A Mobile Broker’s Life on the Radio and in the 1974 Bear Market
A longtime Mobile stockbroker recalls the years he read market reports over WLPR, the punishing bear market of 1974, and the new options game that helped keep his family afloat.
Mobile
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The Bottom Came in December: A Mobile Broker on the 1974 Crash, Recovery, and a Diagnosis He Did Not Expect
In the gloom of late 1974 a Mobile stockbroker drew up two models of the future and labeled them Doom and Boom. The market gave him his answer on December 6. Then his doctor gave him another.
Local News
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Passed Over at 48: A Mobile Broker’s Account of Losing the Manager’s Job He Had Earned
In the next installment of his recollections, a Mobile stockbroker described reaching the top of his profession in 1968, then being displaced as office manager the following year by a younger man with better connections.
Local News
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A Mobile Broker Remembers the Week His Firm Walked Out and Took the Clients With It
In a January 2005 installment of his recollections of a bygone Mobile, a retired stockbroker described the frantic fortnight in which he and his partners opened a new office and persuaded their clients to follow.
Local News
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‘You’re in Deep Trouble’: A Mobile Broker’s Rough First Year Under a New Firm’s Rules
A retired Mobile stockbroker recalled the punishing first year at a new firm, where unfamiliar exchange rules, an unhappy back office and a parsimonious owner made for slow going and a famous Christmas card fight.