Andy Griffith's Manteo : His Real Mayberry

Learn about the real life of beloved actor Andy Griffith.

The world loves Sheriff Andy Taylor. Yet the actor who played him was intensely private. Here, for the first time, is the real Andy Griffith, his career and life defined by the island that made him in the years soon after World War II. He achieved his artistic breakthrough while acting in The Lost Colony drama on Roanoke Island, then spent the rest of his life repaying the island for giving him that start. Here, in unique closeup, is Andy of Manteo, reveling in wild, watery and loving ways with his fellow islanders.

Author and journalist John Railey paints an intimate portrait of Andy, based on interviews with many of those who knew him best on the sand where he lived and died.

John Railey has spent much of his life on the Outer Banks. A graduate of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, he is the former editorial page editor of the Winston-Salem Journal. He has contributed to the Coastland Times and has won numerous national, regional and state awards for his writing and investigative reporting. His previous book from The History Press is The Lost Colony Murder on the Outer Banks: Seeking Justice for Brenda Joyce Holland (2021). He is also the author of the memoir Rage to Redemption in the Sterilization Age: A Confrontation with American Genocide.