Monday, April 29, 2019

What is Dave Patterson reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Dave Patterson, author of Soon the Light Will Be Perfect.

His entry begins:
I like to have a balance of fiction, nonfiction, and craft books going at all times--leaning harder on fiction.

I just finished up Wildlife by Richard Ford. I’m a huge Ford fan. Like a zealot. The short story collection, Rock Springs, and the novel, The Sportswriter, were game changers for me in my twenties. Paul Dano recently co-wrote and directed a film adaptation of Ford’s 1990 novel. I had the opportunity to watch the film and hear Ford discuss the process of writing Wildlife and seeing it turned into a movie. It was fascinating. I immediately...[read on]
About Soon the Light Will Be Perfect, from the publisher:
A twelve-year-old boy lives with his family in a small, poverty-stricken town in Vermont. His father works at a manufacturing plant, his mother is a homemaker, and his fifteen-year-old brother is about to enter high school. His family has gained enough financial stability to move out of the nearby trailer park, and as conflict rages abroad, his father’s job at a weapons manufacturing plant appears safe. But then his mother is diagnosed with cancer, and everything changes.

Set over the course of one propulsive summer, Soon the Light Will Be Perfect chronicles the journey of two brothers on the cusp of adulthood, a town battered by poverty and a family at a breaking point. In spare, fiercely honest prose, Dave Patterson captures what it feels like to be gloriously, violently alive at a moment of political, social and familial instability.
Visit Dave Patterson's website.

My Book, The Movie: Soon the Light Will Be Perfect.

Writers Read: Dave Patterson.

--Marshal Zeringue