Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta

By Richard Grant

Book Overview

In Dispatches from Pluto, adventure writer Richard Grant takes on "the most American place on Earth"--the enigmatic, beautiful, often derided Mississippi Delta.

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--winner of the Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize--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, 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1476709645
• ISBN13: 9781476709642
• Release Date: October 2015
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Informative with Spunk!

Dispatches From Pluto is a balanced narrative of the experiences and insights of a couple of Northerners who buy a charming but problematic old home in the Mississippi Delta. Grant conveys a range of emotions and observations with reality and a sense of humor living in a culture so different from what they have known, managing to capture the outlooks of the people who have called the area home for generations. Race is of course a theme, but Grant is able to relay the experiences and attitudes of locals with a panoply of the people who make up the past and present calling the Delta home. As a person whose experience of this region is limited I am grateful to learn about it from a writer who treats its idiosyncrasies with openness that neither preaches nor whitewashes the complexity of its history and current challenges. I feel like this review doesn’t do the book justice, because even though I feel I learned a lot about an unfamiliar culture, reading it has been a genuine pleasure. I am impressed with Grant’s writing style and will seek out other books he has written!