Blue Ridge

Blue Ridge is the seventh in a series of deliriously idiosyncratic novels by T.R. Pearson. The narrative is two-pronged, focusing in part on the rather shabby and unsettled existence of Ray Tatum -- a deputy sheriff in the Virginia Appalachians -- whose story is interwoven with that of his cousin, Paul, a Roanoke actuary by trade and hopelessly brittle by disposition. The novel opens with Ray settling into a new job in a sleepy town only to be handed a case involving a discovery of human bones on the Appalachian Trail. Paul, on the other hand, is called abruptly from his job to New York to identify the body of his son, a young man he has only seen once in his life. These twin stories, each with a corpse at its core, unspool and evolve in tandem, one in the wilds of the Virginia Uplands and the other on the streets of Manhattan. They are married by tone and theme, and by Pearson's trademark humor. It is double-barrelled to the last word.