| Population: 485 (P.S.) |  | Author: Michael Perry
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $13.99
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Seller: englishjohnpgh
Rating:  78 reviews
Sales Rank: 29,914
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0061363502
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN: 9780061363504
ASIN: 0061363502
Publication Date: August 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Welcome to New Auburn, Wisconsin, where the local vigilante is a farmer's wife armed with a pistol and a Bible, the most senior member of the volunteer fire department is a cross-eyed butcher with one kidney and two ex-wives (both of whom work at the only gas station in town), and the back roads are haunted by the ghosts of children and farmers. Against a backdrop of fires and tangled wrecks, bar fights and smelt feeds, Population: 485 is a comic and sometimes heartbreaking true tale leavened with quieter meditations on an overlooked America.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 78
 A thoughtful celebration of what ties us together October 30, 2002
Victoria A. Griffith (Seattle, WA USA)
17 out of 18 found this review helpful
What a treat to find this great new book! This is a memoir by the most interesting character you could imagine. Michael Perry is a poet, a registered nurse, a trained EMT and a volunteer fire fighter. After years away from his small home town in rural Wisconsin, he returns and writes about the things that happen to him there. The result is a funny and often moving account of the things that are really important in life - with insights that can be gained only from a man faced daily with life and death situations. Perry has a beautiful cadence to his storytelling and makes the transition from laugh out loud storytelling to heart-wrenching tragedies seamlessly. I swallowed the book whole and marked up my copy with underlined quotations and margins full of stars of agreement. A definite must-read.
Pleasant Surprise! November 18, 2002
jan (Aurora, IL United States)
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
I am a former resident of the small town in Mike Perry's new book, Population 485. Thinking the book would be a humorous depiction of life in the midwest, I settled down for a light-hearted story. Though there was indeed some laughter, there was also tears and wisdom gained through Mike's insights on the meaning of life. This ranks as one of my favorite books and highly recommend it to everyone. I am now looking forward to his next book!
Birth, Life, Death- the whole damn thing October 29, 2002
Chris
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Lyrical, sometimes funny, often meditative observations on small-town life. This book is similar in flavor to Thomas Lynch's The Undertaking. The author's ruminations about his life, past and present, arise out of the emergency calls he responds to as a part his town's volunteer fire department and EMS response unit. While the subject matter may seem depressing, it certainly is much more about life, especially the well lived life, rather than death. Highly recommended.
Raves for Population 485 October 19, 2002
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
In one short paragraph, Michael Perry can summon the power to make you laugh, cry and think deeply about the human condition. His considerable powers of observation and description bring his town and his people to life - you find yourself looking for their pickups in the lane next to you. And you find them - because his people are your neighbors, your friends and strangers with the sound turned up too loud - you just never looked at them through Perry's volunteer fireman's goggles before. Buy two copies - one to read and one to save for that day, not too far off, when a first edition Michael Perry will be a thing to treasure.
Population: 485 Will Make You Appreciate People December 11, 2003
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Author Michael Perry is a poet, registered nurse, EMT (emergency medical technician) and volunteer firefighter in northern Wisconsin. Perry grew up on the family farm and rarely went to town for anything but school activities. Now, 20 years later, he's been away and moved back. He lives in a weather-worn-house on Main Street in this town of 485 where good-paying jobs are 30- or 40-miles away.
Perry's memoirs, Population: 485, Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time, is a breathtaking account of life in small-town America where weirdoes and oddballs, the upscale and the downtrodden, the fast lane and the slow pace all merge as the fabric of community life.
After years away he returns and writes about being a townie and foreigner at the same time. The result is funny and moving, an account of things that are truly important in life with insights that can only be provided by one who faces moments of life and death daily. Rarely but occasionally childbirth occurs in the arms of the rescue squad. One of Perry's ambulances carries the insignia of a stork, departmental recognition of its delivery on-board. More frequently and without regard to religious preference, income status, political belief or necessarily age, rescue squads see life at its other end, and Perry takes you on a ride that shifts between laugh-out-loud storytelling and delicate description of heart-stopping tragedy.
Population: 485 could be about this town or any other small town. Once through this book will not be enough. I find myself turning again and again to the description of the farmer's wife armed with a pistol and a Bible or that of the senior member of the fire department, a cross-eyed butcher with one kidney and two ex-wives (both work at the only gas station in town).
Perry made me laugh at myself and smile at more than a few of my neighbors in his discussion of lawn ornaments. (Gosh, he must have spent time in Vermont.) "We threw off the chains of tasteful restraint the day they invented plywood," he says. "The wooden tulip, the plastic sunflower, the begonia-filled toilet, the duck with the windmill wings and even the grandma with polka-dot bloomers bending over in the garden ... is a celebration of where we are. Fake deer, Green Bay Packer ornaments," (those are rare in Vermont) "and goofy mailboxes; they tell me I am in a place where, for better or worse, I know the code." And, I would argue, knowing the code is precisely what makes us feel at home.
Perry's landscape is neither steam cleaned nor blow-dried. It is one, I believe, that any small town aficionado will take to heart.
His stories are great ones about everyday people. I guarantee that if you're familiar with a small town anywhere you'll recognize his characters and find yourself thinking that sounds like someone I know.
What I found most remarkable is not just that they are great stories, but that they are true and that Perry layers this collection to a conclusion (this is my warning) that is more powerful than fiction.
Michael Perry is an appreciator of people, and Population: 485 will make you one, too.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 78
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