Population: 485 - by Michael Perry (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"Part portrait of a place, part rescue manual, part rumination of life and death, Population: 485 is a beautiful meditation on the things that matter." -- Seattle Times

Welcome to New Auburn, Wisconsin (population: 485) 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. Michael Perry loves this place. He grew up here, and now--after a decade away--he has returned.

Unable to polka or repair his own pickup, his farm-boy hands gone soft after years of writing, Perry figures the best way to regain his credibility is to join the volunteer fire department. 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.

From the Back Cover

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.

Review Quotes

"In the best tradition of books that pay quiet homage to community servicy, place, and the men and women who live there. A perfectly pitched celebration of small-town life..." - Kirkus Reviews
"This is a quietly devastating book--intimate and disarming and lovely." - Adrienne Miller, Esquire
"I have been waiting for thirty years for a fresh and talanted voice to rise out of the volunteer fire service in America, and finally it has arrived in Michael Perry's Population 485. Perry is a firefighter/EMT and he makes you feel you are responding right along with him to fires, auto wrecks, even suicides, and his hard work is told with the thoughtfulness and gracefulness of a first responder who cares about people, his town, our country, and the world we live in. But this is more than a book about a small town fire department. It is a literary venture told on the cusp of service to his community - all written with a soft human touch by an intuitive writer with a distinctive and refined American style. Firefighters and EMTs will be talking about this book for a long time to come. And, so will all readers who have a love for American literature. This is a small town story in the big tradition of Sherwood Anderson and James Agee." - Dennis Smith, Report From Ground Zero
"My heart goes out to anybody who knows--and writes as well as Michael Perry does--about rural small-town life. His book is often funny, sometimes heart-breaking, but always full of life, characters, and the tangled web of small town history, daily drama, and strain of occasional weirdness that make country living such a challenge and an adventure. New Auburn, Wisc. sounds a lot like Pleasant Valley, New York, except colder in the winter, so I felt immediately at home, reading POPULATION 485. If there's one thing I admire more than a man who can go home again, and does, and happily, it's a volunteer firefighter. Mr. Perry's account of firefighting is scary, inspiring, and renews my gratitude towards our own, to whom I owe much. He has written a joy of a book, as gnarly, stubborn, courageous, and full of eccentricity in all its forms as country life itself." - Michael Korda
"Minnesota has Garrison Keillor...Neighboring Wisconsin has Michael Perry. If you read one non-fiction title this autumn, make it this one. It's that good." - The Sunday Oklahoman
"Part portrait of a place, part rescue manual, part rumination of life and death, Population: 485 is a beautiful meditation on the things that matter." - Seattle Times
"Humorous, poignant..." - Chicago Tribune
"a remarkable new book, sometimes comic - sometimes sad..." - Los Angeles Times
"Swells with unadorned heroism. He's the real thing ." - USA Today
" Population: 485 is bound to be one of the best non-fiction books of the year...Filled with moments of tenderness, humor and just plain goofiness as it takes us into the lives and homes of the inhabitants of one small town...Makes for riveting reading." - Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
"Population: 485 has a storytelling heart that won't quit." - New York Times Book Review
"...finely crafted, hard to come by honesty." - Hope Magazine
"Somewhere between Garrison Keillor's idyllic-sweet Lake Wobegon and the narrow-mindedness of Sinclair Lewis' "main Street" lies the reality of small-town life. This is where Michael Perry lives." - St. Paul Pioneer Press
"...may simply be the best book about small-town life ever written." - Wisconsin State Journal