Books: Population: 485; Truck; and Coop by Michael Perry

These three books tell a chronologic story of Michael Perry's adult life.

He is single in the beginning, living, writing and working as a first responder / EMS / firefighter in a small Midwestern town (pop. 485). He writes with humor and a serious love for this place.

He also writes of his job: "I answered two consecutive pages, the first for a wounded cop, and the second for the man who shot him…The cop kept telling us how much it hurt, and when he couldn't talk, he squeezed my hand. We were deeply relieved when we delivered him alive…The ER doc stuck his head in, took one look [at the shooter who had tried to blow his brains out] and shook his head. Then he told us the cop had died…Ten years later, I called Phil, and he says the image he retains is the cop's gun belt on the bloody ambulance floor, the buckle open, the holster empty."

Michael is self-deprecating, ruminative and usually just very funny.

In Truck, he falls in love with Annelise and her small daughter, Amy; he restores a 1951 International Harvester pickup truck with a lot of help from his friends and continues his daily life: "Which is to say after all the conscientious nibbling, I would fling myself off the wagon. Follow the tofu nibbles with deep-fried cheese curds. Lay a foundation of fresh vegetable salad, then brick it over with half a tray of caramel bars. Skinless chicken followed by chocolate of any formation or quality. Carrots and half a bag of mini-doughnuts…."

But not all humor: "The radio show about Rwanda sets a sadness in me that will recur for days, compounded by my awareness that such moping is at best impotent and at worst cosmically insulting to those who suffer whether you mope or not…And yet it is the very voluminous evidence of the horrible things we willingly visit upon each other…that invests a willing act of kindness, the tiniest touch or gentle word to a friend or stranger, with energy powerful enough to reverberate around the universe. And so when I see acts rooted in gentleness and purity, the tears rise "

A lot of sweetness in his novels.

Coop: Marriage and the"full catastrophe" as Zorba says. Of course, not really for Michael as he assures us often how he loves his wife and Amy and their new baby Jane. But his life HAS changed. He settles into a home of his own with ideals of self-sufficiency, with plans and good intentions and hopeful hearts in which everyone who aspires to such has found despair and humor: "Not so long ago I stepped through the front door to find Amy in the middle of the kitchen unrolling a flag-sized poster of me. It was from a book tour stop somewhere back along the line. My visage was full-color and big as a cheese platter. Amy held the poster unfurled before her, and I admit I savored the moment right up until she turned and laid it face up on the bottom on the guinea pig cage."

Pigs, chickens, dogs, sheep, gardening, fencing, haying, writing….and the kids of course, with many remembrances of things past, of his childhood, his parents, their simple and complex lives: "'Let's go check and see if the hay is dry', Dad would say after he kissed Mom and thanked her for lunch…..When you pulled your gloves off after a long day of haying in hot weather…your hands were wet and moist, almost dishpanny and your wrists were matted with bracelets of sodden chaff where the cuffs had clung. It felt good, though, the cool air on your skin."

"When I am forced to cast my eyes beyond my own navel, I realize that a dip in sweet melancholy is every bit as indulgent as a bubble bath. Be joyful, says Wendell Berry, though you have considered all the facts."

Perry considers nearly everything in his life and then gives it to the reader.