Through the letters, readers gain insight into the life of Willie Morris and the complex relationship between him and his son. This visually appealing work has a place in academic and public libraries that collect the work of Mississippi authors.--Jeffrey Martin "Mississippi Libraries" Love, Daddy is a poignant, heartening, and honest portrayal of the often-complicated relationship between a father and son. David Rae''s photographs cover a lot of visual ground, and Willie''s letters make us love and appreciate him more than ever. It is a wonderful combination of pictures and words from two artists. David Rae proves in his introduction that he, too, can write well, and the excellent foreword by Kaylie Jones tells us as much about the deep friendship between her father, James Jones, and Willie Morris, as it does about the peripatetic times in which they lived. This book is a real labor of love.--Maude Schuyler Clay, photographer and award-winning author of Delta Land, Delta Dogs, Mississippi History, and Mississippi Love, Daddy: Letters from My Father explores the complex, troubled relationship of a father, Willie Morris, a brilliant writer and editor, and his son, David Rae Morris, a gifted photographer and writer.

David Rae gathers letters his father wrote him over a twenty-three-year period and illustrates them with his beautiful photographs. Willie''s struggle with alcohol, his deep love for Mississippi, and his devotion to David Rae are recurring themes in his letters, each of which he signs, ''Love, Daddy.'' The layering of Willie''s prose and David Rae''s photographs has a hypnotic effect on the reader. Together, they draw us into a world that is at once painfully familiar and hauntingly strange. Willie encourages David Rae to, ''Allow the words to flow from the photographs. This will work for you. Wait and see.'' David Rae wisely followed his father''s counsel, and the result is Love, Daddy, a book that will touch the heart of every reader.

--William R. Ferris, Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History Emeritus and Senior Associate Director Emeritus of the Center for Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Should the world need a reminder of the profound value of old-fashioned letter writing, Love, Daddy ought to do the trick. Wise, funny, and deeply loving, Willie Morris''s letters to his only son trace the arc of a deeply bonded father-son relationship as well as the late career of an important southern literary voice. Willie went at life in a messy, complex, big-hearted fashion. David Rae''s photographs and accompanying essays round out this honest portrait of a flawed but exceptional man.--Alexandra Styron, author of Reading My Father: A Memoir There is a time in every man''s life when he becomes more father than son. It is that moment that he must stare deeply into places in his heart that evoke both pain and joy.

In Love, Daddy: Letters from My Father David Rae Morris looks back at his relationship with his father, Willie Morris, in letters and photographs with grace, elegance, and humility, free of bitterness. There is a poignancy to the father-son relationship captured in these photographs as well as in Willie''s wise and elegant words that introduce the images.--W. Ralph Eubanks, author of A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey through a Real and Imagined Literary Landscape When author Willie Morris died in 1999, he left behind an enduring legacy as a journalist, nonfiction writer, novelist, editor, and essayist. He was also a prolific correspondent and for decades relied on notes and letters as a principal means of communication with his son, whom he often kept away at an emotional arm''s distance. In Love, Daddy, David Rae Morris includes more than one hundred of these letters, as well as dozens of photographs that he took over the course of his award-winning filmmaking and photography career. He also explores--with unflinching candor yet affection--his and his father''s complex and at times stormy relationship, a detailed examination that provides a personalized biography of one of Mississippi''s favorite native sons.--Jack Bales, editor of Conversations with Willie Morris and Shifting Interludes: Selected Essays.