NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The powerful story of an inspiring doctor who made a difference by
helping to create a program to care for Boston’s homeless community—by the Pulitzer
Prize–winning New York Times bestselling author of Mountains Beyond MountainsI couldn’t put
Rough Sleepers down. I am left in awe of the human spirit and inspired to do better.”—Abraham
Verghese author of Cutting for Stone Tracy Kidder has been described by The Baltimore Sun as a
master of the nonfiction narrative.” In Rough Sleepers Kidder shows how one person can make a
difference as he tells the story of Dr. Jim O’Connell a gifted man who invented ways to
create a community of care for a city’s unhoused population including those who sleep on the
streets—the rough sleepers.” When Jim O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was
nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital the 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? Jim took the job because he felt he
couldn’t refuse. But that year turned into his life’s calling. Tracy Kidder spent five years
following Dr. O’Connell and his colleagues as they served their thousands of homeless patients.
In this illuminating book we travel with O’Connell as he navigates the city offering medical
care socks soup empathy humor and friendship to some of the city’s most endangered
citizens. He emphasizes a style of medicine in which patients come first joined with their
providers in what he calls a system of friends.” Much as he did with Paul Farmer in Mountains
Beyond Mountains Kidder explores how a small but dedicated group of people have changed
countless lives by facing one of American society’s difficult problems instead of looking away.
