The author of "Truck" is an International man of not-so-much mystery

Mike Perry is not in the truck, the 1951 ¾-ton International pickup that stars in his 2006 book, "Truck: A Love Story."

Instead, he's in a rust-encrusted Chevy Malibu, headed from his home in Fall Creek, Wis., to a reading in Milwaukee.

"I am always a big disappointment," Perry said over the phone the other day. "People will say, 'Where's the truck?' but when it has an effective radius of 15 square miles ... You try driving to Milwaukee."

You laugh, because you know this guy. He's the one in line next to you at some fund-raising feed, who answered your small-talk opener with a gap-toothed one-liner shimmering with smarts. He's the guy in the flannel shirt buying diapers at a minimart with a rolled-up New Yorker in his back pocket.

And that is what makes Perry's books so charming. He writes of everyday life in rural Wisconsin — the characters, the cold, the quirkiness. But his books are also about the things that we all know: the discoveries of the heart, and those under the hood of whatever is rusting in your yard.

In "Truck," which was released in paperback in July, Perry tracks a year in his life that includes the restoration of the beloved International, his struggles to grow a vegetable garden and the wonderful surprise of love after years of misses.

He will read from and discuss the book from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Seattle Public Library's Ballard branch, 5614 22nd Ave N.W.

"Truck" started, in part, because Perry was sick of "happy gardening books."

"I wanted to write a grim gardening book," he said. "I was the guy for it."

But then he went to the library one day and met a woman who would become his wife.

"Once she became a part of my life, she had to be articulated," he said. "Is there not room enough in a man's heart for both a truck and a woman?"

A former nurse and current volunteer firefighter and EMT, Perry, 42, started writing in 1992. Radio ads for car dealerships, chapters for medical and legal textbooks. Then he wrote an essay about working as an EMT in his small town and showed it to a writer friend who showed it to an agent.

The result: "Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time," which was published in October 2002. He followed with a collection of essays, "Off Main Street: Barnstomers, Prophets and Gatemouth's Gator," in 2005.

Perry is on the road about 100 days of the year — away from his farm, his wife, his daughter and his new baby girl and his pigs, who will inhabit much of his next book.

He changes the names of his family and friends to give them "a veneer of privacy."

"They didn't ask for this," he said. "They give up so much as it is, I let them have their own names.

"But my name really is Mike Perry."

The voice is quiet and shy, not a bit the roadside raconteur you might expect Perry to be.

He calls himself an "amateur existentialist" who keeps a seed catalog tucked beside a book of Dylan Thomas poems. He can write anywhere, he said, but prefers a room in his house where his grandmother's smoke-soaked stereo console keeps him company.

"I am real self-conscious about writing about myself," he said. "I am a writer with a small 'w,' so you're constantly wondering, 'Are you yapping too much here?' It's a very fine line."

His writing depends on his staying home and living the very life that readers have come to know.

"I need to be, truly, a citizen," he said. "I fed the pigs and changed a diaper before I left this morning. I'm keeping it real."

And to those who loved the ending of "Truck," a note:

"We are now mowing the same lawn where we got married," he said.

Nicole Brodeur: 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.