South, Towards Home: An Unexpected Love Story - Paperback

Briggs, Porter B.: - In his first book and ninth decade, Porter Briggs' story begins in the sixties, circles the globe, and ends in a love letter to the South. Porter's grandfather was born on the heels of the Civil War, and Porter grew up in the rise of Civil Rights. His father was Arkansas' first pediatrician. His mother's death from alcoholism when he was eighteen years old left its cold imprint even, or especially, on the one-night affair that produced his son. After college, and Cold War tank maneuvers, and grad school in Germany, Porter came home to Little Rock. In the next ten years he promoted Arkansas, founded catfish-farming and Medicare associations, and advanced historic preservation and restoration. Heading to California, he drove an anti-nuke campaign starring Paul Newman. Going East, he blazed a singular path through Wall Street, massive greenhouses, and a business in boxwood, the great American shrub-interspersed with a White House Fellowship, John Denver's massive concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and hanging out with Sting. Porter was with Drexel-Burnham-Lambert the day it blew up, in Virginia when his personal life imploded, and two blocks from the White House on 9/11. In the aftermath of all three he'd built a thriving passport business when the love of Diane Wilder led him home to Arkansas. Porter vowed early to shut off God, but God never left him. Not in bad decisions, not in business upheavals . . . not when he gave up his son for adoption and then labored for decades to find and know him. Porter would tell you God plays the long game, and that it's worth the journey. South, Towards Home is his journey: a love story that starts with a boy losing himself and ends with a man finding his son.