T.R. Pearson and photographer, Langdon Clay, will be on Thacker Mountain Radio October 14th in support of their book, The Year of Our Lord: Faith, Hope, and Harmony in the Mississippi Delta (Mockingbird Publishe, hd. 19.95).
Lisa's review from Dear Reader:
What an amazing, and, thank you, Jesus, different kind of book about the Delta. But not surprising—if you know the work of either Pearson or Clay you would be expecting something special. Tom Pearson has written 11 novels, including the acclaimed A Short History of a Small Place, and Seaworthy, a true account of a 70-year-old man crossing the Pacific Ocean by raft. Clay has been a photographer for House and Garden and his work was featured in Jefferson’s Monticello. Just as extraordinary as those accomplishments is the true story of Lucas McCarty, a young white man in Indianola, afflicted with cerebral palsy, who can only communicate with Minspeak, an icon-based language delivered with a device known as the Delta Talker. How Lucas falls in with John Woods, the oxygen man on a catfish farm and an admitted, but redeemed killer, and how he leaves St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church to become a member of the Trinity House of Prayer, a black holiness church where he feels more accepted and encouraged as a choir member (“I am white on the outside but black on the inside.”) is a story that is, as Pearson says, “the most remarkable thing I know.” A striking, important, and unsentimental book that in all its colorful narrative and 39 photographs goes a long way toward trying to explain the inexplicable place that is the Delta. LH