Truck: A Love Story by Michael Perry

Description

From the publisher: “All I wanted to do,” says Michael Perry, “was get my old pickup truck running.  That, and plant a little vegetable garden.  Then I got distracted by this woman…”

From the opening sentence – The story begins on a pile of sheep manure the size of a yurt – Perry turns TRUCK into an offbeat jaunt in which the author struggles to grow his own food (“Seed catalogs are responsible for more unfulfilled fantasies than Enron and Penthouse combined”), live peaceably with his neighbors (one test-fires his black powder rifle in the alley; another’s best Sunday shirt reads 100 PERCENT WHUP-ASS) and sort out his love life.  Along the way, he starts his hair on fire, is attacked by wild turkeys, takes a date to the fire department chicken dinner, and proposes marriage to a woman in New Orleans.

As with Population: 485, much of the spirit of Truck lives in the characters Perry meets: a one-eyed land surveyor; a paraplegic biker who rigs a sidecar so his quadriplegic pal can ride along; a bartender who refuses to sell light beer; an enchanting woman who existed only on the inside flap of a cookbook, and half the staff of National Public Radio.