Jim the Boy is a coming-of-age novel by Tony Earley

Tony Earley

Tony Earley is an American novelist and short story writer. He was born in San Antonio, Texas, but grew up in North Carolina. His stories are often set in North Carolina....

, published by Little, Brown and Co. in 2000

2000 in literature

The year 2000 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* February 13 - Final original Peanuts comic strip is published...

. It details a year in the life of Jim Glass, who lives, with his mother and three uncles, in the small fictional town of Aliceville, North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

. It is about a boy who is in this rural town and never really knew how vast the world acutally was or how many people there were.

Allusions from other works

• Nashville Musician Paul Burch
  Paul Burch
  Paul Burch is a Washington, D.C.-born musician, songwriter and producer. Burch moved to Nashville in the early '90s where he began singing in the city's '50s-era honky tonks, garnering the attention of Marianne Faithfull and Chet Atkins...
  
  , Earley's neighbor at the time, was asked to write an album based on the storylines and characters in the book. The album, Last of My Kind, was released by Merge Records
  Merge Records
  Merge Records is an independent record label based in Durham, North Carolina. It was founded in 1989 by Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan. It began as a way to release music from their band Superchunk and music created by friends, and has expanded to include artists from around the world and records...
  
   in 2001.
• In one scene Jan Karon
  Jan Karon
  Jan Karon is an American writer and novelist, who has written for both children and adults. Karon was born in Lenoir, North Carolina, in 1937, as Janice Meredith Wilson. She retired from a career in advertising and moved to Blowing Rock, North Carolina, to write...
  
  's book In This Mountain, the local bookseller is seen reading Jim the Boy, noting (truthfully) that it was a book "which The New York Times
  The New York Times
  The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
  
  had raved over."