Population 485

meeting your neighbors one siren at a time

by

234 pages

English language

Published May 6, 2002 by HarperCollins.

ISBN:
978-0-06-019852-7
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
50769364

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(3 reviews)

Welcome to New Auburn, Wisconsin, where the local vigilante is a farmer's wife armed with a pistol and a Bible, the most senior member of the volunteer fire department is a cross-eyed butcher with one kidney and two ex-wives (both of whom work at the only gas station in town), and the back roads are haunted by the ghosts of children and farmers. Against a backdrop of fires and tangled wrecks, bar fights and smelt feeds, Population: 485 is a comic and sometimes heartbreaking true tale leavened with quieter meditations on an overlooked America.

6 editions

reviewed Population: 485 by Michael Perry

None

There was a sense of familiarity, as Perry writes about the town he grew up in - the same town he returned to - and the people who live there. I came from a smallish town - 10 times the size of New Auburn - but the coziness of it all is similar to what I remember growing up, and to what my husband relays about his small-town life.

The characters in the book seem almost too good to be real. It would be a good work of fiction; it's even better that it's not.

Just a warning - bring a box of tissues for the end.

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Subjects

  • Perry, Michael, 1964-
  • Volunteer fire fighters -- Wisconsin -- New Auburn -- Biography.
  • Emergency medical technicians -- Wisconsin -- New Auburn -- Biography.
  • New Auburn (Wis.) -- Social life and customs.