In the 1960s Leslie Garrett was positioned to claim a place in the pantheon of important American writers. The Knoxvillian-to-be was living the life of expatriate writer in Paris in 1966 when he learned that his first novel, The Beasts, had won the prestigious Maxwell Perkins Award, named for the legendary editor of Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe and William Faulkner. Then Garrett disappeared from view…