In Truck - A Love Story, author Michael Perry describes a chunk of his life in rural Wisconsin during the year or so that he spent resurrecting his 1951 International L-120 with a lot of help from his brother-in-law. During that same period of time, he coincidentally fell in love with a woman after living 38 years as a bachelor, and proposed marriage.
The two stories happening in parallel, along with a number of other anecdotes, make for a pleasant walk through the life of a man not unlike many of us, with the exception that he's more observant than most. He's got family and friends to contend with, a set of avocations he's moderately successful in, a job (as a self-employed author) that takes up too much of his time, a love life to struggle with, and a need to share part of himself with the rest of the world in writing. That all of this is taking place just on the other side of Lake Michigan from here just underscores the fact that we all walk a similar path, and like Mr. Perry seems to be saying in between the lines, life is what you make of it. This is down-home country goodness for upper midwesterners. Recommended.
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Truck: A Love Story ISBN 0-06-057117-9; HarperCollins 2006. Hardcover, 281 pages including postscript. $24.95
