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The time and place: Cotton Point, Georgia, just after World War II. The event: the murder of a fourteen-year-old black girl by a respected white citizen named Paris Trout, who feels he’s done absolutely nothing wrong. As a trial looms, the crime eats away at the social fabric of Cotton Point, through its facade of manners and civility. Trout’s indifference haunts his defense lawyer; his festering paranoia warps his timid, quiet wife; and Trout himself moves closer to madness as he becomes obsessed with his cause—and his vendettas.
Praise for Paris Trout
“A masterpiece, complex and breathtaking . . . [Pete] Dexter portrays his characters with marvelous sharpness.”—Los Angeles Times
“A psychological spellbinder that will take your breath away and probably interfere with your sleep.”—The Washington Post Book World
“Dexter’s brilliant understanding of the Deep South has allowed him to capture much of its essence—its bitter class distinctions, its violence, its strangeness—with a fidelity of detail and an ear for speech that I have rarely encountered since Flannery O’Connor.”—William Styron
“Dexter’s powerfully emotional novel doesn’t have any brakes. Hang on, because you won’t be able to stop until the finish.”—Chicago Tribune
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
November 4, 2014 -
Formats
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780812987393
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780812987393
- File size: 3245 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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July 1, 1988
An expertly crafted and bleakly fascinating tale of social conflict and madness in the deep South, this novel centers on the eponymous Paris Trout, owner of a general store and other property in Cotton Point, Ga., during the years just after World War II. A cunning, violent man, with deep roots in the community, Trout has become an economic predator of the town's poor blacks by running a loan service for them out of the safe in his store's back room. The tensions between Trout and the blacks reaches a critical point when Trout, along with a strong-arm goon, murders an 11-year-old black girl and badly injures a black woman while collecting a debt. Into the vortex of this storm are drawn a number of other characters, highlighting the racial and social divisions of Cotton Point: lawyer and gentleman Harry Seagraves, who is repelled by the case; Paris's wife Hannah, brutalized by her husband and in powerful psychological bondage to him; and Carl Bonner, a young, idealistic lawyer who seesaws between his past in the town and his recently acquired sense of being an outsider in its circumscribed society. Trout's murder trial forces Cotton Point to face some dark truths, while setting in motion a chain of events that lead to a crescendo of violence. Dexter (Deadwood, God's Pocket) is a deft and economical storyteller and a cruel but observant chronicler of deep South customs and characters, with something of a Faulknerian feeling for the bullying violence that can lay at the heart of an inbred small town. -
August 1, 1989
In what PW described as ``an expertly crafted and bleakly fascinating tale of social conflict and madness in the deep South,'' the eponymous protagonist of this National Book Award-winning novel murders a black child while collecting a debt and is astounded that he is prosecuted for the crime. 50,000 first printing .
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