Conecuh County people, farm inspire recent novel by Rhett Barbaree

'Thank God for Boll Weevils'

When author Rhett Barbaree began looking for inspiration for his novel, “Thank God for Boll Weevils,” he didn’t have to look far.

Falling back on fond childhood memories of his ancestral farm in south Conecuh County, he penned a book that’s drawn attention from media outlets across the state, including newspapers and television stations in Birmingham, Mobile, Huntsville, Enterprise and Clanton.

Barbaree’s novel, which has been described as historical fiction that reads like Mark Twain, is set in Enterprise in Coffee County in the early 1900s and describes how the people of that area dealt with changes brought on by the boll weevil, an insect that devastated the cotton crop and forced farmers to diversify their crops. Touching on the work of peanut researcher George Washington Carver, the story is told through the eyes of main narrator, Janie Taylor. The novel is woven together by fictional and historical characters, who paint a story of that era with hard times, humor and spirituality, Barbaree said.

“Though the setting for my book is around Enterprise, I got the background for my story from Melrose Plantation which is located just outside of the Paul community,” Barbaree, a native of Andalusia, said. “This land was homesteaded by my fourth great-grandparents, Abram and Mary Jones, in the year 1819 and is still owned by various family members to this day. I also used many family names for the characters in the story, all of who grew up in the Paul and Brooklyn area.”

Barbaree, the grandson of the late Mitchell and Lois Taylor Jones of the Paul community, said “the idea for the book was something that came to me when I was praying about what kind of lesson I should teach to a youth group in Talladega several years ago. What God impressed on me was the story of the boll weevil, something I was familiar with but can promise you was the farthest thing from my mind at the time. After doing a little research on the computer I put the night’s lesson together and titled it ‘Thank God for Boll Weevils.’”

The project that began as a lesson for a youth group, eventually turned into a full novel as Barbaree continued to research and write about the subject.

One unusual aspect about the book is that it includes a character based on and named after a young woman he met in Florida named BonnieKate Pourcia of Baton Rouge, La. Two months after Barbaree met the woman and told her he planned to use her name in his book, Pourcia was wounded in the tragic theater shooting incident in Aurora, Colo.

“I met her two months before this happened,” Barbaree. “I told her when I met her that I was going to use her name in my book, which I did. Little did I know she would soon come to exemplify the main theme of my book which is 'Lifting our adversities up to God' which is what I was impressed with by the symbolism of the boll weevil monument.”

The famous boll weevil monument in downtown Enterprise features the statue of a woman with her arms outstretched to the heavens holding a boll weevil in her hands.

“This is what my people must do when faced with their heartaches, tribulations, and adversities,” Barbaree said. “If they will lift them up to God, he will take them and turn them into a blessing.”

Published in November 2012 by Tiger Iron Press, copies of “Thank God for Boll Weevils” are available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.