Books like The heart can be filled anywhere on earth by Bill Holm

The author of the beloved Coming Home Crazy returns to his hometown and investigates - through the lens of small-town life - what community means to us and the rigid definitions we give to "success" and "failure.". Growing up, Bill Holm could define failure easily; it was "to die in Minneota." But when he returned to his hometown ("a very small dot on the ghost of an ocean of grass") twenty years later - jobless, broke, and divorced - he began to uncover its lost histories and to discover more of himself and of our time. By stepping out of the mainstream into what others regard as a backwater, Holm began to question the pace of our culture and how, in the rush to get ahead, we've lost our roots. Whether tracking the forbidden recipes of Holm's parents or spilling the beans on the scandalous affair of Hester and Art, The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth celebrates the connections between us that we both fear and desire. By finding that which is meaningful in the seemingly insignificant, Holm delights us with stories of his town and of our need to belong.

First publish date: 1996