NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The powerful story of an inspiring doctor who made a difference, by helping to create a program to care for Boston’s homeless community—by the Pulitzer Prize–winning, New York Times bestselling author of Mountains Beyond Mountains
“I couldn’t put Rough Sleepers down. I am left in awe of the human spirit and inspired to do better.”—Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone
Tracy Kidder has been described by The Baltimore Sun as a “master of the nonfiction narrative.” In Rough Sleepers, Kidder shows how one person can make a difference, as he tells the story of Dr. Jim O’Connell, a gifted man who invented ways to create a community of care for a city’s unhoused population, including those who sleep on the streets—the “rough sleepers.”
When Jim O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, the chief of medicine made a proposal: Would he defer a prestigious fellowship and spend a year helping to create an organization to bring health care to homeless citizens? Jim took the job because he felt he couldn’t refuse. But that year turned into his life’s calling. Tracy Kidder spent five years following Dr. O’Connell and his colleagues as they served their thousands of homeless patients. In this illuminating book we travel with O’Connell as he navigates the city, offering medical care, socks, soup, empathy, humor, and friendship to some of the city’s most endangered citizens. He emphasizes a style of medicine in which patients come first, joined with their providers in what he calls “a system of friends.”
Much as he did with Paul Farmer in Mountains Beyond Mountains, Kidder explores how a small but dedicated group of people have changed countless lives by facing one of American society’s difficult problems instead of looking away.
About the Author
Tracy Kidder has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Award, among other literary prizes. His books include Mountains Beyond Mountains, Strength in What Remains, The Soul of a New Machine, House, Among Schoolchildren, Old Friends, Hometown, and A Truck Full of Money.
Praise For…
“What does it mean, in our time of inequality, to care for the vulnerable in ways that strengthen the better angels of our common humanity? Tracy Kidder’s book, and the work of Dr. Jim O’Connell, connect us to unforgettable individuals, who allow us to get closer to the suffering that is only one part of what we need to see.”—Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, author of Random Family
“I couldn’t put Rough Sleepers down till the last page. Kidder’s writing sidesteps labels like ‘homeless’ to reveal the humanity of those who live on the streets. As with Mountains Beyond Mountains, I am left in awe of the human spirit and inspired to do better. That is Kidder’s genius.”—Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone
“Rough Sleepers will do for homelessness what Mountains Beyond Mountains did for public health. I’m in awe of this book. I’m in awe of Jim O’Connell. What a compellingly beautiful, inspiring read.”—Alex Kotlowitz, bestselling author of There Are No Children Here
“The nightmare of homelessness can seem both overwhelming and slightly abstract to the safely housed. That abstraction vanishes in the pages of Rough Sleepers. Tracy Kidder has reported the hell out of important stories before, but never more finely and relentlessly. It’s a story full of hard questions, a story with many heroes.”—William Finnegan, author of Barbarian Days
“The estimable Tracy Kidder has found another unsung saint—this time not in the backcountry of Haiti or in genocide-ravaged Burundi but on the streets of a major American city. And once again, this finely crafted story sheds light on a larger landscape of injustice.”—Adam Hochschild, author of American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis
