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Coker and Clarkson: Contemporary Paris Writers

Two relatively new fictional writers and offerings have come to my attention involving their personal association with the Paris, Texas, area.  It is always intriguing to take note of those who have ventured into the literary realm.

Donald Coker presents us with an interesting portrayal in the guise of Dr. Jeffery Diamond, a recently widowed physician, who practices medicine in a small east Texas town. Due for a long vacation, Diamond plans a two-week trip to Mexico. But as he flies his private aircraft to several destinations in Mexico, he inadvertently becomes involved with a major drug cartel that has targeted his aircraft as a potential vehicle for transporting cocaine into the U.S.

David Clarkson contributes a somewhat melodramatic fictional family saga.  After three members of his family are tragically drowned, protagonist Roscoe moves to Paris, Texas.  The novel is packed with nostalgia, including automobiles, bygone products, movies, and songs with emphasis on those recorded by African-American artists. There is much lore on vanishing aspects of the American scene: boot-making, cotton picking, syrup making, and sawmilling to name a few. Fauna and flora are interwoven profusely into the narrative. An appearance by Elvis Presley with the Louisiana Hayride in 1955, a flashback to the nation’s third most devastating municipal fire in 1916, and a description of a horrific lynching in 1893 give the novel a historical slant.

Reader comments

I’ve read countless novels set in some small town, and naturally assumed the town was fictional. But after reading your post, it dawned on me that isn’t necessarily the case. Any small town can serve as a locale for a story, and if the author is familiar with the town, it seems it would make the story that much easier to write and far more realistic.

The details you mentioned in Clarkson’s book reminded me of today’s Paris Founders Lions Club program: a history of the Paris Fire Department up to 1950. Seeing old photos of Paris and hearing of the lives and works of others never fail to leave me with a feeling of being connected with the past. And it’s a good feeling.