Ray: One Man's Life

by Denele Pitts Campbell, Ray Mooney (Narrator)

“I’ve had my jaw broke three times, my nose broke five times to the point that the VA had to do the operation they do to boxers. My hand’s been broke and on fire once, enough that the skin was gone clear back to my wrist. I’ve fell off buildings, ladders, and mountains. Somehow I survived all that craziness.”

How Ray Mooney survived the incredible journey of his life is indeed a question for the ages. Polio, combat assault jumps from helicopters in Vietnam, and three children by three different wives didn’t kill him. Neither did the flagrant murder of his father by his father’s latest wife. But the traumas changed him, as they would change any man.

Told in his own words, Ray’s life story rushes from one shocking experience to the next and brings him to the last days as he faces end stage lung disease. Turkey killer, outlaw, entrepreneur, and disabled vet, this boy from the horse farms and tobacco fields of Kentucky relates his adventures with wry wit and breathtaking honesty.

218 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 5, 2016

About the author

Arkansas native Denele Campbell tracks her family’s roots in the state back to the early 1800s and credits this inheritance for her love of homegrown tomatoes and hoot owls late at night. After college and a few years on the West Coast, Campbell and her then-husband settled on a tick-infested Ozark hilltop to raise three children amid organic gardening, milking goats, and preparing for the apocalypse. Since the 1980s when her series of biographical profiles of musicians was published in The Grapevine, Campbell’s interest in Northwest Arkansas and its people has resulted in articles published in the Washington County Historical Society’s quarterly, Flashback, and several books. Good Times is Campbell’s most recent work focusing on local history.

Reviews

[Lizzie Ashworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

J. B. Hogan wrote: The take away from this book is that Ray Mooney has lived one tough life. And you won’t get any Pollyanna ending from it either. No falsely uplifting conclusion to make you feel good about yourself and the world. Nope, none of that. This book is about being honest and authentic. Put together by highly skilled author and historian Denele Campbell from the personal recollections of Ray Mooney, this basically chronological memoir takes us from the impoverished hills of Kentucky to the terrors of combat in Viet Nam. We learn about Ray’s many loves, wives and children and the horror of his father’s murder by Murderin’ Liz, one of Ray’s stepmothers. There’s no way to recount all the stories in here, there are too many of them and they often beggar the imagination to describe. Suffice it to say it is an extraordinary read, and a fast one. I give it five stars on sheer candidness alone.

[Denele · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just want to say that the 1-star ratings on this book are hate acts performed by people who are trying to harm me personally because of my political views on a law under consideration in the Arkansas Senate. These ratings have nothing to do with the book but Goodreads refuses to remove them despite multiple explanations of why they are here.