About This Book
Tracy Kidder is one of the great practitioners of narrative non-fiction—a writer who can make the ordinary feel profound simply by paying close attention to it. Home Town follows a police officer in Northampton, Massachusetts over the course of a year, using that lens to tell the story of a small American city trying to navigate change and the question of what community means. For all my fascination with history and the sweep of empires, there is something equally compelling about the human scale—about the texture of daily life in one specific place. Kidder finds that texture and honors it beautifully. This is a quiet book, but it stays with you.