Judge Olly Neal grew up in Arkansas during the ’50s and didn’t care much for high school. One day he cut class and wandered into the library. It’s there he came across a book by African-American author Frank Yerby. The provocative cover piqued his interest, but Olly had a rough-and-tumble reputation to uphold. So rather than check out the book and have his classmates see he was voluntarily reading, he stole it.

The Treasure of Pleasant Valley

He came to StoryCorps to tell his daughter Karama Neal about what happened next.

Check out Judge Olly Neal’s story as a StoryCorps animated short, “The Treasures of Mrs. Grady’s Library.”

Originally aired on October 2, 2009, on NPR’s Morning Edition. A rebroadcast aired on September 27, 2019 on the same program.