Home Town

In this fascinating book Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder takes us inside the everyday workings of Northampton Massachusetts -- a place that seems to personify the typical American hometown. Kidder unveils the complex drama behind the seemingly ordinary lives of Northamptons residents. And out of these stories he creates a splendid startling portrait of a town in a narrative that gracefully travels among past and present public and private joy and sorrow. A host of real people are alive in these pages: a tycoon with a crippling ailment; a criminal whom the place has beguiled a genial and merciful judge a single mother struggling to start a new life at Smith College; and at the center a policeman who patrols the streets of his beloved hometown with a stern yet endearing brand of morality -- and who is about to discover the peril of spending a whole life in one small place. Their stories take us behind the towns facades and reveal how individuals shape the social conscience of a community. Home Town is an unflinching yet lovingly rendered account of how a traditional American town endures and evolves at the turn of the millenniums.