One of the most remarkable and surprising books about the Mississippi Delta has just arrived at Turnrow. It's called Year of Our Lord, and it's about Lucas McCarty, a young man from Indianola, Mississippi, who has forged a unique life for himself against significant odds. Due to cerebral palsy, Lucas is unable to speak or control his muscles and movements with normal ease, but it hasn't stopped him from starting a cleaning business or singing in the choir at his church. But this isn't your typical story of overcoming obstacles and turning handicaps into blessings. There is nothing remotely typical about Lucas nor his congregation, the Trinity House of Prayer Holiness Church.
For the past year or so, author T.R. Pearson (best-known for his novel A Short History of a Small Place and one of our favorites, Seaworthy) and photographer Langdon Clay of Sumner have come in and out of the bookstore on research trips for this book, feeding us with updates and details of their project. They've kept us continually fascinated and curious about the characters they encountered, especially Lucas, who refuses to be confined to his wheelchair and often flops down from his seat and scoots around on kneepads, never letting his physical impediments curtail his vibrant personality. We even had the honor of accompanying them on a trip to Trinity House of Prayer, the African-American church in Moorhead where Lucas sings, where he is the only white congregant. The gracious worshippers there accepted us, as they have Lucas, as one of their own.
Where most writers would have approached this subject delicately, handling the characters with kit gloves, Pearson plunges in honestly. He doesn't paint Lucas as a saint, nor forgives himself for early apprehension, and he conjures up scenes with native humor. In the book's opening chapter, the author wonderfully describes his first encounter at a Trinity House service, a scene "so exotic and alien to me that I couldn't decide if things were coming entirely apart or falling rapturously together." Here is the first of many wondrous contradictions he finds that capture the unique, off-kilter character of the Delta.
But this is not Lucas' story alone. It is also about the redeemed parishioners of the church (who "straggle in from grimmer religions ... [and] tend to be freshly reformed alcoholics, recovering addicts, all-purpose backsliders who have arrived by plan or by chance within the orbit of Bishop Knighten and have yielded to the claims of his considerable gravity"), the Minspeak language and device that allows Lucas to communicate, the state of farming and the general character of the modern Mississippi Delta.
Any reader, after entering this story, will want to know more, and Langdon Clay's photos fill in vital elements to the story. Both journalistic in their depiction of Lucas in action and the rituals of churchgoers in their religious and private lives, they're also artistic impressions of the land and people that form the backdrop to this essentially local story. We've admired Langdon's photography for years and are glad to see his work represented to well in this collection.
If there's anything we've learned being in the Mississippi Delta, it's that stories around here are never quite as pat and tidy as you might expect. Honoring this, Pearson and Clay have have found the honest elements of a Delta story and arranged them in the most unexpected way.
Having watched these players in action before, we heartily recommend you come out Wednesday, October 13, to meet Lucas, Langdon, Tom and Bishop Willie B. Knighten, hear them speak, then behold the Trinity House of Prayer's gospel choir featuring Lucas McCarty. If you can't be with us, you can order your signed copy of Year of Our Lord here.
