BRINGING HEALING TO THE HOMELESS

Cambridge Forum, in partnership with the

Harvard Square Business Association 

invites you to join us for an in-person discussion with

“Rough Sleepers” author Tracy Kidder

First Parish, 3 Church Street Cambridge

or on Zoom

In-person RSVP to:

wmanley@harvardsquare.com

Zoom Registration:  

Clink Here Link To Register To Zoom Call

Tracy Kidder’s, “ROUGH SLEEPERS” centers around one dedicated doctor and his mission to provide medical care to the homeless. The book is a powerful account of the dedicated work of “Dr. Jim” O’Connell, a physician who founded Boston Health Care for the Homeless in 1985. When O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency, the Chief of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital asked him if he would defer a prestigious fellowship to spend a year helping create an organization to bring health care to the homeless. Dr. Jim took the job because he felt he couldn’t refuse, but that one year was to turn into a lifetime working with the homeless on the streets of Boston and in his Thursday Street Clinic at MGH. Now in his 70s, Dr Jim is still captain of the “Street Team” who provide care for the city’s unhoused population – the people who sleep rough.

“Rough Sleepers” is the result of spending five years shadowing O’Connell’s work bringing medical care, socks, soup, humor and friendship to some of the city’s most endangered individuals. Much as he did in his profile of Paul Farmer, Kidder explores how a small but dedicated group of people have improved and gladdened thousands of lives by facing one of America’s most difficult problems, rather than looking away. 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.”

Tracy Kidder graduated from Harvard and studied at the University of Iowa. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other literary prizes. His books include; Mountains Beyond Mountains, Strength in What Remains, The Soul of a New Machine, House, Among Schoolchildren, Old Friends, Hometown and A Truck Full of Money.