This Veterans Day, Arkansas native and U.S. Army veteran Porter Briggs will release “South, Towards Home,” a memoir tracing his journey through war, loss and reinvention to a life rooted in love and the Southern soil that shaped him. The book is available now for pre-order at SouthTowardsHome.com and will be on sale nationwide Nov. 11 at local and national retailers. Briggs will celebrate the launch with an author talk and book signing at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 11, at Wordsworth Books (5920 R. St., Little Rock 72207).
Briggs’ journey began in the 1960s and spans continents, careers and second chances. After leading a tank platoon in Cold War Germany, he returned to Little Rock where he was recruited by Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller, in the fallout from the 1957 desegregation crisis at Central High School, to lead Arkansas Careers, a campaign to keep talent in the state, and spent the next decade building organizations that promoted Arkansas. He advanced historic preservation, founding the award-winning American Preservation magazine, eventually selling it to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Meanwhile, his day job supported everything Arkansas, from rural hospitals to catfish farms. He later managed an anti-nuclear campaign in California with Paul Newman, staged John Denver’s historic concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg, worked on Wall Street and briefly as a White House Fellow. He was in rural Virginia when his personal life imploded, at Drexel Burnham Lambert the day it collapsed, and two blocks from the White House on September 11, 2001. Through it all, for 16 years, he cared for boxwood shrubs at the Lincoln Memorial as a personal act of civic service and was chosen Volunteer of the Year by the National Park Service.
At its heart, “South, Towards Home” is the story of a boy who lost his mother to alcoholism, shut out loved ones and gave up his unexpected son for adoption in Zurich, only to spend decades searching to find him again. At its heart, it is a story of coming home.
“Porter writes with a rare combination of humility and honesty,” said Nancy Lovell, a Texas-based editor. “Porter’s memoir is less about battles won or lost than the quiet reckoning of the people and places that make a life worth living.”
Briggs has pledged a portion of his book sales to support the Fisher House in Little Rock, which provides free lodging for veterans and military families seeking medical care.
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