Nonfiction Book Club
September 28 @ 10:00 am - 11:00 am
This month, we will discuss Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O’Connell’s urgent mission to bring healing to homeless people by Tracy Kidder.
From the Penguin Random House website:
In Rough Sleepers, Kidder tells the story of Dr. Jim O’Connell, a gifted man who invented a community of care for a city’s unhoused population, including those who sleep on the streets—the “rough sleepers.”
After Jim O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General, the hospital’s 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? That year turned into O’Connell’s life’s calling. Tracy Kidder spent five years following Dr. O’Connell and his colleagues as they work with thousands of homeless patients, some of whom we meet in this illuminating book. We travel with O’Connell as he navigates the city streets at night, offering medical care, socks, soup, empathy, humor, and friendship to some of the city’s most endangered citizens.
Copies of this book are available at the library.
Our discussion will be held in a hybrid format. The host will be in person at the BFL, while some members will join over zoom. You are welcome to join either way. For zoom, please register here to receive the meeting details:
