Now that I’ve finished Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, which is the 2005 Summer Reading Program selection at Keene State College, I’m re-reading Home Town, Kidder’s narrative about the town of Northampton, Massachusetts. Having loved Home Town when I read it for a book group over a year ago, I’m looking forward to teaching it alongside Mountains, which profiles a very different landscape.
Whereas Kidder in Mountains Beyond Mountains travels the globe to chronicle Dr. Paul Farmer’s quest to eradicate infectious disease in places such as Haiti, Cuba, and Russia, in Home Town Kidder tells the story of one New England city and its denizens: a “townie” police officer with FBI dreams, a single mother pursuing a degree at Smith College, a brilliant lawyer plagued with obsessive-compulsive disorder. A biography of a community in both its geographic and interpersonal senses, Home Town explores the ways that place influences people and how people return the compliment.
I look forward to reading and discussing this book with Keene State College freshmen as they navigate the transition between the places they come from and the places they dream of going.
