I was drawn to this book because the man who provided these anecdotes about Capote's early years to the author, Marianne Moates, is my first cousin, Jennings Faulk Carter. He is Capote's first cousin also. The stories told by Carter mostly came on summer visits to his Alabama home by young Truman Capote who was partly raised by divorced parents in New Orleans and New York and his eccentric aunts and uncles in Monroeville, Alabama. There are many accounts of the childhood experiencenes of the threesome-Jennings Carter, Truman Capote and Nell Harper Lee("To Kill a Mockingbird") Although some of the stories are hilarious, there is an underlying theme of brokenness, divorce, and alcohol abuse that shaped young Truman Capote into a talented but confused, effiminate, alcoholic homosexual. The book was more interesting to me for the simple fact that it deals with some of my relatives and some of my childhool memories. I am saddened, however, that many of Truman Capote's adult problems seem to have come from a childhood full of strife, mistrust, conflict, substance abuse and family instabiliy.

Essentially the recollections of Truman Capote's cousin, Jennings Faulk Carter, this book recounts the childhood years that Truman spent in Monroeville, Alabama growing up with Jennings and Nelle Harper Lee, author of "To Kill a Mockingbird." It contains descriptions of actual events that appear in Capote's later writings, and thus will be of interest to readers of his fiction, but the writing is pleasurable in its own right.

Fascinated by the number of good writers who have come out of such a small town (there are others), I drove two hours each way to visit Monroeville while on a business trip to Mobile several years ago. Even though it has grown substantially since Truman grew up there, it remains a lovely southern town, with wide verandas, shade trees and a courthouse that is not to be missed.

This book is pretty good, Its considered a Nonfiction book since its based on the killings of the Clutters, but Truman did make up some of this stuff too. I watched a video about In Cold Blood, lemme tell ya, this Truman guy has the weirdest voice ever, and he has the 2 male killers in the book constantly calling each other 'Honey' and stuff... Its a pretty good attention getter for about the first half, but the last half gets kind of boring when Dick and Perry are being questioned and all that jazz.