The Man Who Talks to Strangers

Caleb Pirtle III has traveled down many back roads and dead end streets during his writing career as newspaperman, magazine editor, and author. He collects people. More accurately, he collects their stories. Some call him a writer. He calls himself a thief. He says, "I steal their stories, write, and publish them." He has written a memoir of sorts about many of those whose paths he crossed - from the down and out to national celebrities, from country music stars to death row inmates, from hit men and lawyers to farmers who struck it rich when the oil fields broke the Great Depression that gripped East Texas. You will find a mesmerizing collection of the famous, the notorious, the unknown. Pirtle's stories will make you laugh and cry and feel good about mankind. Some are hard edged. Some prick and warm the heart. He says, "What happens is never as important as the people who make it happen," and those in his memoir are not easy to forget. As one reviewer said, "His writing reads like short stories of literary fiction. They're not quite like anything you've read before." Pirtle believes his whole life has hinged on one simple fact. He's the man who talks to strangers wherever he happens to find them.