by Berton Roueche
The subjects of this book are seven small towns in Nebraska, West Virginia, Missouri, Texas, Indiana, Iowa and Arkansas. The author, a staff writer for the New Yorker noted for his medical journalism, visited the towns, staying long enough to find ways to describe the surroundings, pick up a bit of history, and get people to tell him revealing things. Roueché can evoke images with a single line, such as this one about Stapleton, Nebr.: "The only sound was the wind—the hot, dry, everlasting wind—stirring the cottonwood trees." He reports on a visit to the burial grounds in Hermann, Mo., where the older headstones in the cemetery are in German. Near Crystal City, Texas, "The highway ran as straight and flat as a landing strip between hedgerow thickets of mesquite and prickly pear, with every now and then a lavender burst of cenizo sage in bloom, and always a pair of vultures drifting high above the road." Despite all the talk about the death of the small town, the communities Roueché found are flourishing. As a woman in Hermann says, "Nothing but good can happen to us here." Do people in America's big cities ever feel that way? (Little, Brown, $12.95)
Your Reaction
