Michael Perry’s new memoir is the book equivalent of pumpkin pie: it doesn’t try to redefine dessert—or reading—as you know it, but it’s a humble classic, it’s a surefire crowd-pleaser, and when it shows up on your doorstep, you’re going to open that door wide and welcome it in. It even packs some hefty nourishment: the only difference is that whereas a pie will give you physical vitamins, Perry’s book offers vitamins for that mushy, esoteric part of you called the heart.

Perry lives and writes in rural northern Wisconsin, where he’s a part-time EMT, an inveterate gardener, and a full-time observer of rural humanity. He begins "Truck: A Love Story" with the intention of finally fixing up the immobile rust heap gracing his front—front!—yard. His attention soon drifts, though, to more tantalizing projects—like choosing seeds from the wildly optimistic pages of his favorite gardening catalogs. He also assesses the sometimes oppressive weight of untried recipes crouching in his modest bachelor cookbook collection, and he laments that just when he decided to live in harmony with his hair, it opted for a trial separation.

The stretch of small-town Wisconsin he writes about is a little bit Lake Woebegone and a whole lot "Northern Exposure." It’s stocked with more than its fair share of oddball characters, including one whose Sunday-best T-shirt reads "100 PERCENT WHUP-ASS." It’s also home to strong women who can birth livestock and feed a family with nothing but "a fistful of coupons the size of a bad UNO hand." Perry describes them all in what amounts to a love letter to his neighbors, even a love letter to the idea of neighborliness itself.

But the true twin loves of "Truck" are the eponymous decaying pick-up and the woman who would become Perry’s wife. Both love affairs involve passion and uncertainty, and together, they lead the author over a rough road of change and through a sort of mid-life growth spurt. Perry chronicles it all with deeply funny deadpan observations and a keen mindfulness about life’s everyday—what? Miracles? Graces? Those sound so ostentatious, and he is faultlessly self-deprecating. Maybe it’s best to say that he observes everyday life with gratitude and an exciting clarity. Like Elizabeth Gilbert’s "Eat, Pray, Love," his book reminds us—with wit, humility, and steady, even rapt, attention—that the secret of life is all in how you spend it.

"Truck" is that infrequent book I want to recommend to everyone because I think there’s so much in it we can all recognize—and so much that we can take comfort in. And comfort, however often it’s derided, is a rare quantity these days. We all deserve an extra helping. So, at the risk of underselling its funniness (and it’s chock-full of 100% of your RDA of funniness), I’ll just remind you that "Truck" is pumpkin pie, and as far as I’m concerned, Michael Perry is the real deal.

Review by Mark David Bradshaw, October 26, 2006