Hampton Sides likes to say he was born to tell the story of Martin Luther King Jr. and his assassin, James Earl Ray. He was 6 when his hometown snapped. Hampton’s father worked for the Memphis law firm that represented King when the civil rights leader led protesters down Beale Street in support of the city’s striking sanitation workers, most of them black. As King’s march grew violent, riots broke out. Tanks and troops moved in to quell the roiling racial tension.

A week later, on April 4, 1968, Ray, perched in the window of a seedy flophouse, centered his rifle scope on King as he relished the day on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel – just outside Room 306. That night, Hampton’s father arrived home shaken and ordered the family’s evacuation. Hampton remembers fleeing in the back seat of his parents’ red Volkswagen Beetle and for decades, he felt haunted by the shame of having King killed in his city. It wasn’t until the release of Hellhound on His Trail that Hampton was finally able to exorcise that demon. Now he’s got another demon to deal with – one that hounds him on his trail as he makes the rounds plugging his new book.

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In the literary world, Mary holds the position of grande dame memoirista, a writer whose sassy, often hilarious voice and poet’s vernacular have won the admiration of millions of book lovers across America.

Quite an achievement for a girl who grew up in a whacked-out family in East Texas, raised by a mother who treated her and her sister like lizards.

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