Parnassus Books welcomes Harrison Scott Key signing The World’s Largest Man and Michael Perry signing The Jesus Cow.
About The World’s Largest Man:
The World’s Largest Man is the uproarious, heartwarming story of Harrison Scott Key, a shy and reserved Mississippi boy—and the Bunyanesque father who raised him.
The World’s Largest Man begins with Harrison’s childhood, when his father moved them from the comfort of Memphis to Mississippi—which seemed to Harrison a land of werewolves, racism, and tooth decay. When it became clear that he was not able to make his father happy, he left it all behind to become everything his father was not: an actor, a Presbyterian, a doctor of philosophy, with nary a gun or a knife to show for himself. But when it was time to settle down and marry, Harrison found himself returning to Mississippi. With a wife and children, he suddenly saw his father from a fresh vantage point, and realized—for better and for worse—how much of his old man he’d absorbed.
About Harrison Scott Key:
Harrison Scott Key writes a humor column for The Oxford American. His humor and nonfiction have been featured in The Best American Travel Writing and True Stories, Well Told: From the First 20 Years of Creative Nonfiction Magazine and has been recognized in The Best American Essays. He teaches English at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia, where he lives with his wife and three children.
About THE JESUS COW:
With his eye (and ear) for the comical elements of contemporary rural life, New York Times-bestselling author Michael Perry has built a loyal audience with his popular memoirs Visiting Tom and Population 485. Now, for the first time, he turns to fiction with The JesusCow, an affectionately skewed and big-hearted depiction of one miraculous bovine and the chaos it unleashes. The uneventful world of Harley Jackson, low-key Wisconsin farmer, is about to change forever: “On Christmas Eve itself, the bachelor Harley Jackson stepped into his barn and beheld there illuminated in the straw a smallish newborn bull calf upon whose flank was borne the very image of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. “Well,” said Harley, “that’s trouble.”
Harley attempts to suppress the “miracle,” fails spectacularly, and the Jesus Cow goes viral. His peaceful, hometown is quickly overrun with pilgrims, grifters and clamoring media. Then a Hollywood agent jets in with plans to turn Harley’s farm into a neon-lit cheesehead version of Lourdes. The free-for-all is further complicated by Harley’s blooming affair with a truck-driving woman he met at the gas station—she joins a parade of unforgettable characters, from a lonely land developer in a star-spangled Hummer to a devout car-crushing Catholic widow and Harley’s cat-obsessed best friend Billy, who tries to pass off country music lyrics as original philosophy.
About Michael Perry:
Michael Perry is a humorist, radio host, songwriter, and the New York Times bestselling author of several notable nonfiction books, including Visiting Tom, Coop, and Truck. He lives in northern Wisconsin with his family.
