Home Town

Tracy Kidder

Simon and Schuster, 2000 - Biography & Autobiography - 432 pages

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 Northampton's 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 town's 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.

Contents

• The Morning Polka: 33
• A Restraining Order: 57
• A Moral Place: 85
• Hands: 102
• Hunting: 124
• Sanctuary: 148
• Too Cold for Crime: 167
• Tearless Eager and Longing Eyes: 197
• Plain Miss Smith: 211
• Total Mindless Joy: 217
• The Witness List: 246
• Public Works: 259
• Meaning Well: 267
• The Caretaker: 286
• The Application: 299
• The Trial: 307
• Milton: 332
• PART V: 357
• The Farewell Sermon: 359
• Willoughby Gap: 364
• Karma: 376
• Free at Last: 384
• The Judge: 408
• Acknowledgments and Bibliography: 419

About the author

Tracy Kidder was educated at the University of Iowa and Harvard University. He served in the US Army in Vietnam. Kidder has garnered numerous literary awards including the Pulitzer Prize in General Non-Fiction and the National Book Award for General Nonfiction both in 1982. He has also been honored with the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, 1990 and the Christopher Award, 1990. His publications include numerous nonfiction articles and short fiction for The Atlantic and other periodicals. Non-Fiction books include The Road to Yuba City, Doubleday, 1974; The Soul of a New Machine, Atlantic Monthly-Little Brown, 1981 for which he won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award; House, Houghton Mifflin, 1985; Old Friends, Houghton Mifflin, 1993; Home Town, Random House, 1999; Mountains Beyond Mountains, Random House, 2003; My Detachment, Random House, 2005; Strength in What Remains, Random House, 2009.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Home Town
• Author: Tracy Kidder
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 2000
• ISBN: 0671785214, 9780671785215
• Length: 432 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / General; History / United States / State & Local / General; Social Science / General; Social Science / Social Classes & Economic Disparity; Social Science / Sociology / General; Social Science / Sociology / Urban