T.R. Pearson
Author of A Short History of a Small Place
About the Author
Image credit: Photography by T.R. Pearson
Series
Works by T.R. Pearson
Associated Works
Augie's Quest: One Man's Journey from Success to Significance (2007) — Author, some editions — 28 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Pearson, T.R.
- Legal name
- Pearson, Thomas Reid
- Other names
- Gavin, Rick
- Birthdate
- 1956
- Gender
- male
- Education
- North Carolina State University (BA | MA | English)
- Occupations
- professor (Peace College)
carpenter
housepainter - Short biography
- From Wikipedia: Pearson was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He was a student at North Carolina State University, where he gained a B.A. and M.A. in English. He went on to teach at Peace College in Raleigh, North Carolina. He started work on a Ph.D. in Pennsylvania but soon returned to North Carolina, where he worked as a carpenter and a housepainter while he began writing his first two novels, A Short History of a Small Place and Off for the Sweet Hereafter. Neither was published until 1985, when he moved to New York City, where both books were issued by Linden Press.
His novels are set in the South, in the imaginary small town of Neely, near Winston–Salem, or, in his recent novels, in the Appalachian areas of Virginia, where he now lives. His writing captures a uniquely Southern social order, outlook, and voice and has been compared to the work of Mark Twain and William Faulkner.
A Short History of a Small Place, Off for the Sweet Hereafter, The Last of How It Was, Cry Me a River, Polar and Blue Ridge were New York Times Notable Books.
Pearson also collaborated with John Grisham on early drafts of the screenplays for The Rainmaker (1997) and Runaway Jury (1998), films based on two of Grisham's novels.
Pearson is married and lives in Virginia. - Nationality
- USA
- Places of residence
- Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA
Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
New York, New York, USA
Brooklyn, New York, USA
Virginia, USA - Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
Former Deputy Nick Reid has decamped from the “eastern Virginia uplands” to the Mississippi Delta, where there are people “who’d help you out for no conceivable reason and people who’d extract your vital organs for sport” and where “antibiotics and midnight sutures” qualify as romance.
Now he’s a repo man – mostly 40 inch televisions. His landlady’s dead husband’s fully restored 1969 Ford Ranchero, calypso coral in color, is stolen when a repo goes bad and Nick gets show more flattened with a fireplace shovel.
After promising to get the car back he’s chasing down the type of people that drive around “with that baby of theirs on the dashboard to make room for his daddy’s bong.” Fortunately Nick has his giant partner Desmond, a Delta native who knows everyone and seems intent on eating at every Sonic in Mississippi. Eventually the trail leads to “a diabolical Acadian fuck stick” named Guy, a local meth lord with an evil reputation.
As they track Guy, Nick and Desmond encounter some Delta characters and plenty of trouble, much of it “maddening to contemplate, really, much of it easily avoidable.”
The writing is crisp, vivid and colorful, the characters lively, and Ranchero maintains a steady and highly entertaining pace to the end. I’ll be waiting for the next book in the series. show less
Now he’s a repo man – mostly 40 inch televisions. His landlady’s dead husband’s fully restored 1969 Ford Ranchero, calypso coral in color, is stolen when a repo goes bad and Nick gets show more flattened with a fireplace shovel.
After promising to get the car back he’s chasing down the type of people that drive around “with that baby of theirs on the dashboard to make room for his daddy’s bong.” Fortunately Nick has his giant partner Desmond, a Delta native who knows everyone and seems intent on eating at every Sonic in Mississippi. Eventually the trail leads to “a diabolical Acadian fuck stick” named Guy, a local meth lord with an evil reputation.
As they track Guy, Nick and Desmond encounter some Delta characters and plenty of trouble, much of it “maddening to contemplate, really, much of it easily avoidable.”
The writing is crisp, vivid and colorful, the characters lively, and Ranchero maintains a steady and highly entertaining pace to the end. I’ll be waiting for the next book in the series. show less
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
This was a fun romp through the Mississippi delta with some memorable characters, not that I would want to meet them in a dark alley, or a lit one for that matter.I just loved that the posse kept growing. It could have used some tightening at some places, but for his first book ever, Ranchero is very good.
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
In the second installment of this series Nick Reid and his giant friend Desmond continue to collect debts in the Mississippi Delta for a rent-to-own business, now part-time since they’ve come into money they took from a meth dealer. They chase down the hard cases, “people so filthy you’d rather rent furniture to an incontinent cat.”
When they finance a stolen tire scheme by Desmond’s ex-wife’s boyfriend Larry, who legally changed his name to Beluga in prison, they create “a show more tapestry of problems” with a bad family, the Shambroughs, “vicious bastards all dolled up and walking on their hind legs.”
Gavin is masterful at describing people. “A dough planter” is “all gut an entitlement.” This is a humorous and satisfying crime novel. I’m looking for to the next one. show less
When they finance a stolen tire scheme by Desmond’s ex-wife’s boyfriend Larry, who legally changed his name to Beluga in prison, they create “a show more tapestry of problems” with a bad family, the Shambroughs, “vicious bastards all dolled up and walking on their hind legs.”
Gavin is masterful at describing people. “A dough planter” is “all gut an entitlement.” This is a humorous and satisfying crime novel. I’m looking for to the next one. show less
An unnamed narrator takes the reader through their small Virginia town, introducing various residents and their situations. We meet the Dunn family, transplants from Dayton who lived an upper class lifestyle until the husband decided he wanted to be a dairy farmer and moved his family to the outskirts of town. We also meet Clayton, a man who does nothing but watch porn all day until something unexplained happens to turn him into the town prophet, and Ray, a deputy sheriff who is an enigma to show more the single ladies, but is the only one concerned about Clayton's drastic change. There's also Mrs. Humphries, who is so full of bile that she goes to the graveyard to chew out her dead relatives, the death of a famous actor and many more peripheral characters.
This is an odd book, but I mean that in a good way. The writing is florid and verbose, which at first put me off, but within a couple of pages it struck me that it was verbose in the way the show "Deadwood" could often be. It's a richness of language that doesn't occur too often now (it was published in 2002) and there are passages of comic genius. show less
This is an odd book, but I mean that in a good way. The writing is florid and verbose, which at first put me off, but within a couple of pages it struck me that it was verbose in the way the show "Deadwood" could often be. It's a richness of language that doesn't occur too often now (it was published in 2002) and there are passages of comic genius. show less
Lists
Southern Fiction (3)
Sense of place (1)
Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 32
- Also by
- 4
- Members
- 2,114
- Popularity
- #12,174
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 72
- ISBNs
- 75
- Languages
- 1
- Favorited
- 18
