SOMETIMES IT WAS BEAUTIFUL is a very different kind of book in the annals of work published in the American and African-African tradition. It is a true to life story told by PT Armstrong, a man whose incredible life began as the son of an impoverished sharecropper in Texas but who survived those slave-like beginnings to experience the kind of adventures that only a handful of people are still alive to talk about. Despite such life-threatening adversities as severe poverty and Jim Crow racismÑwhen we worked as a ÒmuleskinnerÓ-- Armstrong tended to be Òlucky in love.Ó In SOMETIMES IT WAS BEAUTIFUL, he balances his report on the hardships of life for a young black man during the middle years of the twentieth century in America with tales of a young man constantly in search of love. Whether strongly erotic, humorous, or sad, the story of his quest for love is an unflinchingly honest one. The memoir employs dialect that is true to the era and place.