Writers Who Deserve More Attention I: Tim McLaurin

I mean, besides all of them. 🙂

I'd like to cre­ate a ware­house of links occa­sion­al­ly, ref­er­enc­ing writ­ers who may or may not be on your list of pop­u­lar or well-enough-known writ­ers, along with some small com­men­tary. When I do these, they'll be sub­ject to addi­tions and cor­rec­tions at var­i­ous points as I find more infor­ma­tion, and I'll let y'all know when I edit. Today's writer is Tim McLau­rin, a North Car­oli­na native with a few nov­els, two mem­oirs and one epic-length poem to his credit.

I dis­cov­ered his work by fol­low­ing the blurb trail from Har­ry Crews to Lar­ry Brown to McLau­rin. The first book I found was the mem­oir Keep­er of the Moon, prob­a­bly his best-known book, in which he described his dif­fi­cult child­hood as well as his adult expe­ri­ence in recov­ery from the mul­ti­ple myelo­ma which even­tu­al­ly killed him at age 48 in 2002. I'd read Crews' A Child­hood first, so I knew more or less what I could expect from McLau­rin. Poverty–hardscrabble poverty–and alco­holism, along with often-rap­tur­ous descip­tions of the nat­ur­al world, and con­sid­er­able atten­tion paid to the whys and where­for­es of fam­i­ly inter­ac­tion. The book remains in the enjoy­able though quo­tid­i­an realm until McLau­rin begins to detail his bat­tles with can­cer. I wish every­one who ever sent me a can­cer sto­ry would read this before send­ing it out again. It is a rock-hard rev­e­la­tion of a sto­ry, one you won't for­get soon. I rec­om­mend, besides Keep­er of the Moon, the fol­low­ing titles:

The Acorn Plan
The Riv­er Less Run
The Last Great Snake Show
Cured by Fire
Anoth­er Son of Man

Here's a small list of rel­e­vant links if you'd like to find out more about McLaurin:

• Death of an RPCV Writer: Remem­ber­ing Tim McLaurin
• Remem­ber­ing Tim
• What Con­sti­tutes the Life of a Man: "The dark­ness of the famil­iar" in Tim McLaurin's memoirs
• John F. Blair Publisher's Tim McLau­rin page
• A Heart­warm­ing Moment of Real Courage (please ignore that awful title)