Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles
available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pete Dexter (born
1943) is an American novelist. He was the recipient of the 1988 National
Book Award for Fiction for his novel Paris Trout.He began writing
fiction after a life-changing 1981 incident in which a mob of locals in
the neighborhood of Grays Ferry, armed with baseball bats and upset by a
recent column about a drug deal-gone-wrong murder, beat the writer
severely. The brother of the homicide victim was a bartender at a Grays
Ferry bar and Dexter went to the bar to talk to him because the family
had called the newspaper to complain. Dexter was roughed up at that
meeting and later returned with his friend heavyweight prizefighter
Randall "Tex" Cobb. In the fight that occurred outside the bar in the
street, Cobb received a broken arm that helped end his professional
boxing career, and Dexter was hospitalized with a several injuries,
including a broken back, pelvic bone, brain damage, and dental
devastation.
