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.
