Who

P.O. Box 440357
W. Somerville, MA 02144-3222
www.cervenabarvapress.com

IN ITS THIRD PRINTING!

PRETTY LITTLE LIES
by W. R. Mayo
ISBN: 978-0-9773695-4-6
Copyright 2009, 211 pages
Non-fiction and fully illustrated with 29 photographs, maps and
charts with extensive reference notes.
It is more than a history of the Eastern Arkansas Delta. It is a journey
covering three and half centuries from the origins of a Southern
Arkansas family through the plantation days of slavery, the Jim Crow
Era to the present following a trail of lies, deceit and betrayal.

Take a pinch of Poe, mixed lightly with Faulkner and thicken with
Tennessee Williams and you will not find a more dysfunctional family
in the Southern Gothic tradition.

Pretty Little Lies, as told from the perspective of a member of the
southern Mayo clan, reads like a gothic novel spanning centuries.
In a take no prisoners accounting, W.R. Mayo's book is a serious
undertaking that makes for fascinating reading. Though not from
an old southern family, I, for one, recognize much of what we all
carry in our DNA. -- Susan Tepper, author DEER

In his biting memoir, Pretty Little Lies, W. R. Mayo courageously
puts a dagger squarely into the heart of the southern plantation myth.
By unflinchingly facing his own dysfunctional past, Mayo gives the
romantic idealized version of ante- and post-bellum life below the
Mason-Dixon line a well-deserved paddling. In moving prose, he
reveals the underbelly of the "big house" -- a way of life created and
sustained by traffic in human slavery and one reliant upon the
manipulation, or far worse, of the land and those who lived and toiled
upon it. Pretty Little Lies is a must read for anyone looking to see
past the mythology of the old south. -- J. B. Hogan, author

The Author --
W. R. Mayo is an Arkansas native having been raised in the Eastern Arkansas
Delta on the family farm in Monroe County. He now makes his home in Brazil
but maintains his ties to Arkansas with a residence in Fayetteville where he also
works as a lawyer with offices in Tulsa, Dallas and Goiânia, Brazil.

Other titles by the author are International English for the Legal and Business
Professional, a preparatory textbook for Cambridge University's ILEC exam; Poetry
With Legs, an Anthology of Sin, a fictional anthology of poetry; and Cinquanta, a
photo journal celebrating feminine beauty at fifty. His fifth book is forthcoming,
Recipes From Wives I Have Known.

He can be contacted directly through his business site, www.MayoLawOffices.com

WHO

Unflinching. Revealing. In this exhaustively researched family history, Mayo charts
the rise of a Southern family from its roots in England to the founding of a plantation
in Southeastern Arkansas in the middle of the nineteenth century. Through the
degradations of the Civil War, two world wars, and countless family conflicts still
raging to this day, Mayo lays bare the mythology of the Southern "Nobility." He
frankly examines the treatment of slaves by his family which led to "the other Mayos,"
a family of blacks descended from these slaves, and describes the uncompromising
natures of his progenitors. From his mother who never apologized for anything,
considering it a waste of time, to his racist, domineering father, Mayo chronicles the
infighting, manipulation, and xenophobia prevalent in his family's past. Mayo digs to
the core to face head-on not only the lies, exaggerations, and conscious-salving stories
of "pride" passed down within his family, but also to uncover the real story of Southern
history. As Faulkner said, "The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past." Mayo's
past is certainly not dead, though this book is an attempt to put a stake through its
heart. - C.L. Bledsoe, author of Anthem, Riceland, and editor for Ghoti Magazine.