Paris Trout

Pete Dexter is an American novelist. He was a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News and The Sacramento Bee, and syndicated to many newspapers such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He began writing fiction after a life-changing incident in 1981, in which thirty drunken Philadelphians in the neighborhood of Grays Ferry, armed with baseball bats and upset by a recent column about a drug deal-gone-wrong murder, beat the writer severely.

In Dexter’s 1988 winner of the National Book Award, Paris Trout, the novel tells a dramatic story of one mans’ obsessive bigotry and violence. When the older brother of 14-year-old Rosie Sayers refuses to pay for a damaged car that Trout has sold and insured but will not fix, Trout and an accomplice decide to use him as an object lesson for the black community. Going to Henry Ray's home, Trout shoots his little sister Rosie to death. The story is set in the small town of Cotton Point, taking place just after World War II, the court case that takes place reveals ugly divisions of race and class. As Trout becomes more obsessed with his cause; indifferently, he moves towards greater violence. A spellbinding, elaborate novel.