Sometimes it takes an outsider’s point of view to help convey the truth, and in “Dispatches From Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta,” Richard Grant writes about a piece of Mississippi that has often times been overlooked and certainly misunderstood.

Grant is an award-winning author, journalist and television host, who will be at Lorelei Books on Washington Street at 5 p.m. Thursday for a booksigning and reading.

Grant was born in Malaysia, grew up in Kuwait and went to school in London, England.

He has lived in and traveled to many remote places across the globe, but after being introduced to the town of Pluto by his friend and fellow writer, Martha Foose, he and his girlfriend decided to leave their home in New York City and move to the Mississippi Delta.

“I fell in love with the Delta — warts and all,” Grant said, and in his book, he sheds a positive light on the Delta.

“One of the reasons I wrote the book was to chip away at the bad rap Mississippi gets. I think it is a poorly understood place by the rest of the country,” he said.

Fortunately, many living in the Delta have learned to roll with outside criticisms to the point of even poking fun. Grant recalled one woman’s response to a question asked at one of his book readings.

“Somebody asked me what makes the Delta different to the rest of Mississippi, and this woman in the audience answered, ‘We don’t hide our skeletons in the closet, we bring them out in public and put a bow on them,’” he said.

While other parts of the country may only view the Delta as an uneducated and poor place to live, Grant said he has experienced its warmth and hospitality.

“We showed up on the Thompson’s family plantation and they didn’t know us at all. We were outsiders and they took us in like family. They helped us furnish our house and gave us the keys to the car so we could use it whenever we wanted. I just love the big heartedness. Mississippi has also infected us with their family values. I didn’t want to get married. I didn’t want to have kids and now we have a child,” Grant said.

The Delta has suffered many misconceptions when it comes to race relations, and Grant said he could not make a generalized conclusion on the topic, but described the situation as “tangled.”

“I think the Delta is racially tortured in a way — and racially obsessed. It is way more tangled and complicated than I thought it was, for example, where I was in Pluto there was very very close relationships of black families and white families, and they would weep side by side at each other’s funerals. On the other hand, neither side would mix race relationships amongst their children. So it’s complicated. I saw more close loving bonds between the races here, but then a social segregation and mistrust at the same time,” he said.

Alan Huffman, author of “Mississippi In Africa,” writes that Grant approaches the subjects in his book with empathy, yet pulls no punches, while Curtis Wilkie, the author of “The Fall of the House of Zeus,” writes ‘“Dispatches From Pluto” is wise, wry, sympathetic and spot-on.”

Grant’s books also include “Crazy River, “God’s Middle Finger” and “American Nomads.”