If You Love Baltimore It Will Love You Back

<p><strong><em>Baltimore </em>senior editor Ron Cassie has garnered national awards for his coverage of the death of Freddie Gray sea-level rise on the Eastern Shore and the opioid epidemic in Hagerstown.</strong> This collection of short stories culled from a decade spent roaming around Charm City with a notebook in his back pocket is different however. They are of the kind of wide-ranging city writing and literary journalism that speaks directly to the fabric of a place. There are encounters with former Rep. Elijah Cummings former Senator Barbara Mikulski and Orioles Hall-of-Famer Jim Palmer. But more often these stories revolve around people few Baltimoreans have heard of—a blind police detective old Jewish boxers a flower shop owner the city native who created the statue of Billie Holiday in Upton. Each story makes the picture of Baltimore and its work-a-day inhabitants—gritty resilient quirky—clearer and more complex at the same time.</p>