Perdido River Bastard Quotes

“Flomaton suddenly felt like ancient history. Blooming honeysuckle mingled with a stink from the belching paper mill you could taste in the back of your throat. I tripped on a pair of tree roots diving in and out of the sandy ground like barky sea serpents. Luckily, I didn’t fall or drop the bags. From where I stood, I could see the railroad tracks curving around the bend of pine trees on Muscogee. When I was a boy, Grandpa would take me here to watch trains carry cargo to the paper mill. I remembered him holding my hand as they rumbled by. As I got older, watching trains was no longer fun. My imagination craved make-believe, and the yard was a creative playground for Tyler and me. We used to lay tracks, build forts and secret outposts, and raise all kinds of holy hell with our own version of World War II as the backdrop. And this beautiful oak tree I’d climbed many times as a child. Spanish moss covered most of the branches now. Hattie once told me the gray draping mosses in these trees were memorials for lost and forgotten souls, as if all the nearby dead in unmarked graves had heaved themselves into the branches for the wind to remember. Hattie called them Graveyard Trees.”
― D.B. Patterson, Perdido River Bastard

“On June 3, 1972, I was born in Miss Eva’s barn. Mom christened me Dean Adam Doogan, as she lay sheet-covered and spread-eagled over two bales, her bird legs akimbo. Granny held one leg, Aunt Belladonna held the other, Pidge held her hands, Hattie cradled her head, and Miss Eva was the accidental midwife after Mom went down in that horse stall.”
― D.B. Patterson, Perdido River Bastard

“He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. — Martin Luther King Jr.”
― D.B. Patterson, Perdido River Bastard