Meet Neal Wooten, Sand Mountain Native, Author of “With the Devil’s Help”

By LYDIA BERGLAR
News Editor

“Like every good book before and after it, ‘With the Devil’s Help’ takes you to a place you’ve never been and never known you’ve wanted to go, for a little while, at least.” So writes 

“New York Times’” best-selling author Daniel Wallace about Neal Wooten’s latest book, but for anyone who grew up on Sand Mountain or in the valleys below, the scenes in Wooten’s memoir might not feel so unknown.

Join Wooten next week at the Dade County Public Library’s book club meeting on March 19th at 7 p.m. All are invited to come meet the author, hear about the book, and ask questions.

“With the Devil’s Help” combines family history, mystery, and Wooten’s childhood experience of growing up in poverty with a volatile and violent father. At age 13, Wooten stood up to his father for the first time, and he ended his memoir with this momentous occasion. In between chapters about his childhood, the book unravels a murder, prison escape, and mystery involving Wooten’s grandfather.

Wooten grew up knowing the tale about his grandfather, but he hadn’t thought about putting the story on paper until the Dekalb County Historical Society posted a 1963 newspaper clipping. The newspaper covered how Pete Wooten murdered his son-in-law over potatoes. Wooten commented on the post saying that Pete was his grandfather, and people were intrigued.

Wooten thought, “I need to tell this story because once my mom and I are gone, it’ll be lost forever.” However, he said it was the most difficult thing he’s ever written and he cried like a baby while reliving his past.

To verify the parts about his grandfather, Wooten’s mother was a key source, newspaper clippings helped, and he talked to as many relatives as he could. Some scenes required a bit of imagination.

Wooten explained, “I had to come up with things like conversations my grandfather had with other prisoners. I have no way to know what was said, but I know what kind of person he was. Him and my dad, as violent as they were, were extremely charming and knew how to read people.”

Revealing the family secret didn’t sit well with all of Wooten’s relatives. “Some of them still believe that Pete was innocent and that he took the blame for someone else. My grandad and dad didn’t take the blame for anything they did, and they certainly didn’t take the blame for something someone else did.” Overwhelmingly, though, the response from relatives has been positive. 

As quoted in Bob Carlton’s article for AL.com, Wooten said, “It dawned on me that this story would be a good story–I just didn’t know I was allowed to tell it.”

Explaining his conflicted feelings to the Sentinel, he said, “It’s a breath of fresh air in that I’m glad to finally tell the story. Even so, my dad’s been gone for 20 years, my grandad’s been gone for 44 years, and I still kind of think they’ll show up and be upset.”

Wooten explained that loyalty was key among the impoverished family and community in which he was raised. “Growing up in generation after generation of poverty, the one thing–the only thing–you can count on is blood. People didn’t turn Pete in because in their minds, the authorities, ‘the Man,’ that’s the real enemy of the poor folks. That’s why he could hide out for so long.”

In the book, Wooten describes his difficult childhood. Growing up, he wasn’t allowed to have anyone over because his father was ashamed of their home that had no running water, plumbing, or electricity. He said he believed he was worthless because that’s what his father taught him.

His father sold stainless steel cookware sporadically and farmed now and then. Wooten said, “He never had a real job because he had such a superiority complex; he didn’t like authority figures.”

Wooten’s dad often came up with big ideas, like the time he bought equipment to make sorghum syrup and planted sugar cane. However, he let the equipment rust and the acres of cane die in the fields. “That was the Christmas we didn’t have any money,” said Wooten.

The only thing that offered the family stability was property. Wooten explained, “My mom’s dad gave her 30 acres. Without that, we would’ve always been the new kids in school, moving around constantly.” To this day, Wooten values owning property.

Hearing recounts of the beatings he and his siblings endured is heart-wrenching. Sometimes asked if he exaggerated the violence, Wooten said, “I downplayed it a lot because I couldn’t make the book all about that; there wouldn’t be room for some of the cool stuff.”

Wooten purchased a boxed set of H.G. Wells’ books at age 11 and fell in love with science fiction. Reading became an escape from his harsh reality. Most of his published books are fiction, often with science fiction themes. “With the Devil’s Help” is his first non-fiction book.

He said, “I’ve always loved memoirs. There’s that added twist in the back of your mind knowing that what you’re reading really happened.”

While he planned to drop out of school at age 16 “because that’s what poor country folks did where I grew up,” Wooten was put on a different path by his math teacher, Tonie Niblet, who noticed his natural arithmetic skills. Wooten says he inherited this gift. “My dad only went through second grade, and I don’t think my grandfather ever went to school, but they both were math geniuses.”

Always willing to do anything he could to get out of class, Wooten tried out for the math team and scored the highest. He won first place in the written portion of his first competition, and the team had great success even while competing against much larger schools.

Math helped keep Wooten in school until he graduated in 1983. Then, he recalled, “Halfway through my senior year, Tonie asked me where I was going to college. I thought she was joking. I didn’t know somebody like me could go to college; I thought it was for wealthy people. One teacher can make a difference in a kid’s life.”

He attended Northeast Alabama Community College in Rainsville, transferred to Auburn University, and graduated with a degree in applied mathematics. To pay for school, he worked several jobs, including performing stand-up comedy.

After graduation, he ran a newspaper route, opened a fitness center, continued in stand-up comedy, taught math, and became the director of a math school. He lived in Montgomery, Ala. and Milwaukee, Wis. before returning to Fort Payne where he currently resides. He is now managing editor for Mirror Publishing, a contributor to the Huffington Post, columnist for “The Mountain Valley News,” curator of the Fort Payne Depot Museum, creator of the comic strip “Brad’s Pit,” and author of over 20 published books.

Wooten has been invited to speak at schools, sometimes to the entire student body. He laughed, “I think it’s so ironic, considering how much I hated school. I make sure that my presentation is geared not toward those who will thrive no matter what, but toward those who are questioning whether or not they have a future.”

This is one reason he wrote “With the Devil’s Help.” He explained, “I would love for young people to realize that they’re not alone. I hope people, especially kids, take from the book that no matter your situation now, somebody is going to see your value. As corny as it sounds, if no one is seeing it now, just wait.”

Another reason he wrote the book is explained in the introduction. Wooten wrote, “What I’ve learned in my life is this–and it took me five-and-a-half decades to fully appreciate: there is no normal. The only normal we will ever know comes from the perceptions created by our own experiences in our own little world.”

He told the Sentinel about a time he stayed with his baseball coach’s family while his own was out of town. “I was about nine years old, and the coach’s son played third base. After staying with them, I thought the coach was so weird,” he said dramatically. “He would talk to his son. One time, his son knocked over a glass of milk and they laughed about it and cleaned it up. He took us fishing and took us for ice cream.”

This healthy father-son relationship baffled young Wooten because it was the opposite of what he saw modeled in his own home. “That’s why I say what one person thinks is normal isn’t everyone’s normal.”

He also wants readers to finish the book knowing that “most people have a story–especially when it comes to abuse–that needs to be told. We think that someone has to accomplish great things to justify telling their story, but I think the biggest success is getting out and surviving.”

Having self-published and started Mirror Publishing, Wooten thought he would be able to get an agent, but after multiple rejected books, he had given up the hunt. “Getting a real literary agent is almost like winning the lottery,” he said. “They may get several thousands submissions a month, and most of them aren’t even looking at new authors.”

However, feeling that “With the Devil’s Help” was worth submitting, he tried one more time. The first agent he sent it to loved it and chose to represent it. Then, after 34 rejections from publishers, they received two offers and chose Pegasus Books (with Simon and Schuster as the distributor). The first run of 10,000 hard copies in September 2022 sold so well that Simon and Schuster released the paperback version in May 2023.

Wooten reported that the audiobook has also been very successful. The reader sent Wooten a list of about 300 words that he wanted to hear pronounced so he would know the local names and dialect. Wooten said, “It must’ve worked great because about three dozen people have messaged me and asked, ‘Is that guy from Sand Mountain?’ He’s from New York City!”

After spending a year drafting the book, Wooten asked his younger sister, Denice (called Dinky in the book), to read it first. She offered suggestions, the publisher had suggestions, and his agent asked Wooten to add more details about Sand Mountain. “Between my agent and publisher and everybody who chipped in, it’s amazing how they helped it evolve,” he said.

Those who didn’t grow up on or near the mountain were intrigued by Wooten’s home and wanted to know more about it. He said, “Sand Mountain isn’t like Lookout Mountain; it doesn’t have all the tourists, Little River Canyon, or the exposure. There’s one book that was nominated for a National Book Award in the 90s called Salvation on Sand Mountain. It’s written by Dennis Covington from Birmingham who never lived on the mountain, but he was fascinated by the religious culture. That’s the only thing about Sand Mountain out there that I know of.”

Reviews of “With the Devil’s Help” praise Wooten’s honest look at the good, bad, ugly, and beautiful of his childhood home. As the book description reads, “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.”

Wooten made sure the book didn’t only cover the negative. For example, “My uncle who’s a big character in the book was as country as can be,” he said. “He was an incredibly positive, caring role model. Anything I learned to do, from building rabbit traps to trotlines on the Tennessee river, he taught me.”

Wooten noted that he and his siblings all inherited their dad’s and grandad’s temper, but he decided in his mid-20s not to let that control him. “I had a choice: I could not let anything bother me, or I could let the smallest thing make me fly into a rage. I think often people with negative influences either follow that example or choose to go the opposite direction.”

Wooten concluded, “Anytime I see a dad who’s loving, it melts my heart. When I look at kids now and see them playing video games and with fancy tennis shoes, I’m so happy for them. When people wonder why I’m such a kid today, it’s because I was robbed of that. I love when children can be children.”