Western fans are rapidly becoming familiar with the name Jeremy Perry. Perry’s a writer from southern Indiana who writes several book series, including Brothers of the Mountain, Sheriff Randall King and The Moonshine Series.
He is also the author of several champion short story collections and lots of rural and small-town fiction, and working-class stories.
He is also becoming a major literary voice.
That’s because Perry gets it. His books strive to transcend genre and become honest stories of real men and women. There is an honesty to what he does and an integrity, as well. You’ll see this with the first few books you try and its unlikely you will forget them.
These are some of the thoughts I had reading Hard Luck: Stories, a collection of seventeen short stories set in small-town southern Indiana. Once read, they will stick with you.
These are stories of hard cases and wannabe badmen; of sad women and broken lives; of a country gone sour and a people who are rudderless. The are spare, hard and often mean.
They are fabulous.
While Perry has written some champion Westerns (which we’ll look at later), these stories are set in contemporary America. Perry examines the milieu with a clinicians eye and a philosopher’s heart. You will find here tales of love, of lust, of greed and of murder. This is James M. Cain territory, a parcel of land that Perry is now claiming for his own.
Jeremy Perry is a guy to watch.