Storyteller.

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                                        Family historian.

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                                                                          Researcher.

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Alvin Franklin was born in Detroit and grew up in Flint, Michigan, where he graduated from Southwestern High School. He spent his working life in transportation. He started with trucks, moved up to buses, and drove them across the country before settling into transit work in Huntsville, Alabama, where he still drives today.

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He came to Alabama almost by accident. He was visiting people connected to Redstone Arsenal and noticed how different the place felt from Detroit, slower, quieter, more in step with the kind of life he wanted. He liked it enough to stay. He will tell you he prefers a city that lets you slow down to one that never stops.

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Family sits at the center of it. Alvin is married and has three children, two sons and a daughter, and the family is close. He is proud of how they have turned out and quick to say so.

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He did not plan to become an author. What he had was a box of his grandmother's papers and the stubbornness to find out what they meant. The papers turned out to hold the real story of Lucy Beasley, and tracing it led Alvin to the Arkansas State Archives and, eventually, to a novel. Alvin brought the documents, the research, and the story. The result is Good Golly Miss Molly.

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