Dispatches from Pluto - Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta

Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2015. Foxing to page edges and endpapers, signs of secondhand wear to cover.

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.

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.