Kate Grenville's book, The Secret River, which was a sad, sorrowful tale, beautifully told, I thought maybe some lighter fare would lift my spirits, and Dispatches From Pluto was next on my list.
Richard Grant and his girlfriend were living in a shoebox apartment in New York City when they decided on a whim to buy an old plantation house in the Mississippi Delta. Dispatches from Pluto is their journey of discovery into this strange and wonderful American place. Imagine A Year In Provence with alligators and assassins, or Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil with hunting scenes and swamp-to-table dining.
On a remote, isolated strip of land, three miles beyond the tiny community of Pluto, https://www.amazon.com/Dispatches-Pluto-Found-Mississippi-Delta/dp/1476709645/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
Richard and his girlfriend, Mariah, embark on a new life. They learn to hunt, grow their own food, and fend off alligators, snakes, and varmints galore. They befriend an array of unforgettable local characters—blues legend T-Model Ford, cookbook maven Martha Foose, catfish farmers, eccentric millionaires, and the actor Morgan Freeman. Grant brings an adept, empathetic eye to the fascinating people he meets, capturing the rich, extraordinary culture of the Delta, while tracking its utterly bizarre and criminal extremes. Reporting from all angles as only an outsider can, Grant also delves deeply into the Delta’s lingering racial tensions. He finds that de facto segregation continues. Yet even as he observes major structural problems, he encounters many close, loving, and interdependent relationships between black and white families—and good reasons for hope.
Dispatches from Pluto is a book as unique as the Delta itself. It’s lively, entertaining, and funny, containing a travel writer’s flair for in-depth reporting alongside insightful reflections on poverty, community, and race. It’s also a love story, as the nomadic Grant learns to settle down. He falls not just for his girlfriend but for the beguiling place they now call home. Mississippi, Grant concludes, is the best-kept secret in America.
Richard Grant is a journalist, author and television presenter currently living in Tucson, Arizona. He is the author of three non-fiction books, American Nomads (Grove Press, 2003), God's Middle Finger (Free Press, 2008), and Crazy River: Exploration and Folly in East Africa, to be published by Free Press on October 25th 2011. He writes articles on a wide range of subjects for magazines and newspapers, publishing regularly in the Telegraph magazine (UK), and he is the writer and presenter of American Nomads, a documentary for the BBC based on the book of the same name.
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