If You Love Baltimore, It Will Love You Back - by Ron Cassie (Hardcover)

About the Book

Baltimore senior editor Ron Cassie has garnered national awards for his coverage of the death of Freddie Gray, sea-level rise on the Eastern Shore, and the opioid epidemic in Hagerstown. This collection of short stories, culled from a decade spent roaming around Charm City with a notebook in his back pocket, is different, however.

Book Synopsis

Baltimore senior editor Ron Cassie has garnered national awards for his coverage of the death of Freddie Gray, sea-level rise on the Eastern Shore, and the opioid epidemic in Hagerstown. This collection of short stories, culled from a decade spent roaming around Charm City with a notebook in his back pocket, is different, however. They are of the kind of wide-ranging city writing and literary journalism that speaks directly to the fabric of a place. There are encounters with former Rep. Elijah Cummings, former Senator Barbara Mikulski, and Orioles Hall-of-Famer Jim Palmer. But more often, these stories revolve around people few Baltimoreans have heard of--a blind police detective, old Jewish boxers, a flower shop owner, the city native who created the statue of Billie Holiday in Upton. Each story makes the picture of Baltimore and its work-a-day inhabitants--gritty, resilient, quirky--clearer and more complex at the same time.

Review Quotes

"One of Ron Cassie's vignettes in If You Love Baltimore, It Will Love You Back is titled "The Polaroid Guy," and that's exactly who Cassie is. Only instead of film, Cassie uses the page. His empathetic approach, concern for justice, and keen journalist's eye have been honed over years on the Baltimore beat. As Cassie crisscrosses the city, what develops is an image of an urban landscape and its people in a constant state of rehab--in every sense of the word--that's emblematic of American cities today." -- Gregg Wilhelm, founder and director emeritus, Baltimore's CityLit Project, director of Creative Writing, George Mason University

"Nicolás Ramos, writes Ron Cassie in this anthology of survival in Crabtown, arrived in the U.S. as a teenager to pick broccoli on a farm in Texas before winding his way to Baltimore. Cassie, a reporter with literary instincts worthy of Nelson Algren--eye, ear, and heart full of soul--didn't begin writing about Charm City until he was 42. But oh, the harvest he has gleaned since in this most improbable of cities. It's all here, 171 stories worth in what I trust will be the first of many books Cassie will deliver as his roots sink deeper into the hard red clay along the shores of the Patapsco." -- Rafael Alvarez, former city desk reporter at The Baltimore Sun, short story writer, staff writer for the first three seasons of The Wire, author of Basilio Boullosa Stars in the Fountain of Highlandtown.

"An expansive and yet microscopically detailed portrait of a city--painted with love. Cassie's intimate portrayal of Baltimore's residents, their triumphs and tragedies and work-a-day lives serves as a gorgeous rebuttal to President Donald Trump's tweeted dismissal of Baltimore City as a "disgusting," "very dangerous and filthy place." As Studs Terkel investigated the wage-earner in Working through scrupulous listening, Cassie similarly attends to the tenor of residents' experiences; the composite result is paean to a rust-belt city...in all its quirky glory." -- Karen Houppert, former Village Voice and Baltimore City Paper editor, author of Chasing Gideon: The Elusive Quest for Poor People's Justice, associate director, Master of Arts in Writing Program, at Johns Hopkins University

"When local papers, politicians, police officers and other people who frequent Baltimore collectively decided to demonize 'squeegee kids'--Ron Cassie stepped up and delivered a dose of humanity, humanity that many other outlets ignored. Cassie could've taken the easy route and sided with most publications, but instead he did what was right. He met the kids, brilliantly documented their reality and crafted a beautiful story that the mainstream desperately needed. Cassie is a gem, his writing is extremely urgent, necessary, and we need more writers like him." -- D. Watkins, New York Times bestselling author of The Cook Up and We Speak for Ourselves, editor at large at Salon, University of Baltimore writing professor