Short History of a Small Place

Marvelously funny bittersweet and beautifully evocative the original publication of <i>A Short History of a Small Place</i> announced the arrival of one of our great Southern voices. Although T. R. Pearson's Neely North Carolina doesn't appear on any map of the state it has already earned a secure place on the literary landscape of the South. In this introduction to Neely the young narrator Louis Benfield recounts the tragic last days of Miss Myra Angelique Pettigrew a local spinster and former town belle who after years of total seclusion returns flamboyantly to public view-with her pet monkey Mr. Britches. Here is a teeming human comedy inhabited by some of the most eccentric and endearing characters ever encountered in literature.