"Character is the fingerprint of your soul" - Frank Sonnenberg.

Please join Nancy Zachary in the Scott Room of Scarsdale Library on Wednesday May 21, 2025 at 2 pm to discuss Rough Sleepers by Tracy Kidder.

"Noted long-form journalist Kidder rides along as clinicians try to serve one of Boston’s most marginalized populations.

"The term rough sleeper is not used much in American English. It’s a borrowing from the British way of describing the people who sleep where sleep is not intended: doorways, sidewalks, culverts, etc. Kidder’s hero, Dr. James Joseph O’Connell, has spent decades with volunteer and paid workers driving in a medicine- and supply-stuffed van to the places where this population gathers. ... O’Connell, now well past retirement age, is the tutelary angel of the piece, but many lesser heroes work around the clock to save lives and treat the downtrodden with dignity. The job is thankless and endless.

"A searching, troubling look at the terrible actualities of homelessness" - Kirkus.