Braving Home Pa

“Part travelogue . . . part meditation on the meaning of home” (Wall Street Journal), Braving Home introduces readers to some of modern America’s most unusual, unforgettable pioneers. The cub reporter Jake Halpern—dubbed the Bad Homes Correspondent by his colleagues—sets out on a journey to some of the most unforgiving locales in America. He wanted to understand the people who live there—and more importantly why they refuse to leave. What results is an irresistible portrait of outlandish places and their most loyal residents. Meet a firefighting hillbilly in Malibu; a video store clerk who lives in a snowbound high-rise in Alaska; a hermit whose house in Hawaii, formerly an inn, is entirely surrounded by molten lava.Written in an infectious style and with “swashbuckling spirit” (Christian Science Monitor), Braving Home is an affectionate and affecting tale of rootedness in America.

“Part travelogue . . . part meditation on the meaning of home” (Wall Street Journal), Braving Home introduces readers to some of modern America’s most unusual, unforgettable pioneers. The cub reporter Jake Halpern—dubbed the Bad Homes Correspondent by his colleagues—sets out on a journey to some of the most unforgiving locales in America. He wanted to understand the people who live there—and more importantly why they refuse to leave. What results is an irresistible portrait of outlandish places and their most loyal residents. Meet a firefighting hillbilly in Malibu; a video store clerk who lives in a snowbound high-rise in Alaska; a hermit whose house in Hawaii, formerly an inn, is entirely surrounded by molten lava.Written in an infectious style and with “swashbuckling spirit” (Christian Science Monitor), Braving Home is an affectionate and affecting tale of rootedness in America.

Jake Halpern is the author of Fame Junkies: The Hidden Truths Behind America's Favorite Addiction, and Braving Home: Dispatches from the Underwater Town, the Lava-Side Inn, and Other Extreme Locales, hailed by Bill Bryson as “a splendid and engaging account of stubbornness in Modern America." Halpern has written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, LA Weekly, and many other publications. He is also a commentator and freelance producer for NPR’s All Things Considered. He lives in Connecticut.

Publishers Weekly

Halpern tours America's highways to report on stubborn stalwarts who defy eviction notices and cling to home despite floods, lava, fire and hurricanes. "Most of my destinations were afflicted by seasonal disasters, and I figured... I could hit each place in its fiercest, most defining hour." In Halpern's first week as a New Republic fact-checker, he pitched a story about "a burning town that nobody wanted to leave" and visited Centralia, Pa., where coal mines had been on fire for 40 years. Looking for similar leads, the peripatetic 20-something assembled article ideas and maps into a massive binder and left his job to embark on a journey to "the nation's most punishing landscapes." After a week with 72-year-old Thad Knight, the only inhabitant of a ruined town in the middle of a North Carolina floodplain, Halpern headed for Whittier, Alaska (pop. 182), a 14-story "indoor city" accessible via North America's longest vehicular tunnel. Running a Hawaiian bed and breakfast surrounded by molten lava is healthy hermit Jack Thompson: "I never imagined I was going to end up like this-I mean, living on an erupting volcano." The roll call of rugged individualists includes "the last of the Malibu hillbillies" and a Louisiana hurricane survivor. Halpern's flair for description enables readers to easily visualize the environs of these hardscrabble homekeepers, making the 12 b&w photos almost superfluous. Halpern has carved a creative niche for himself as the New Millennium's skewed answer to the late Charles Kuralt. This is perceptive writing that illuminates the human condition. Agent, Tina Bennett. (July 1) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Jake Halpern is a journalist and author born in 1975. His book, Braving Home was a main selection for the Book of the Month Club by Bill Bryson and was a Library Journal Book of the Year. He is a contributor to NPR's All Things Considered and This American Life. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, The New Republic, Slate, Smithsonian, Entertainment Weekly, Outside, New York Magazine, and other publications. He is a fellow of Morse College at Yale University, where he teaches a class on writing.